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But the other side of the Bitcoin isn’t quite so pretty: huge volatility, persistent threats of theft and fraud and even lingering questions over whether its even legal money. Earlier this year, nearly half a billion dollars worth of Bitcoin disappeared after hackers tapped into the world’s largest exchange, Japan’s now defunct Mt. Gox.

In this environment, it’s worth looking more closely at two standard arguments given for accepting Bitcoin: one economic, the other philosophical.

By and large, the economic argument doesn’t hold up to close scrutiny. Lower transaction fees, for instance, are easily offset by fluctuations in the currency’s value. In the first quarter of 2014 alone, Bitcoin fell 38% against the U.S. dollar. (The only other global currency to experience even half as much of a loss was the Argentine peso.) Services such as Bitpay and Coinbase hedge this risk by immediately converting transactions to U.S. dollars, but they charge a transaction fee for doing so, leaving merchants back where they started. As LA Times financial writer Michael Hiltzick points out, “any financial instrument that experiences such wide swings in price over a short period is clearly not something you want to use as a transactional tool.”

Then there’s the larger libertarian argument in favour of Bitcoin that suggests currencies function best when they’re insulated from government meddling. Depending on the economic school of thought you subscribe to, this proposition may make a lot of sense. To become stable enough to reach widespread adoption, however, Bitcoin has had to embrace (or be subjected to) many of the very rules and regulations it was designed to avoid. As of March 25, for instance, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service ruled that Bitcoin will be recognized as property, not a currency. This means holders are not only required to pay the regular withholding tax, they must also claim any capital gain on the transaction (otherwise known as double taxation).