“ ‘But its mere existence is an insurance policy that will remind governments that the last object establishment could control, namely, the currency, is no longer their monopoly. This gives us, the crowd, an insurance policy against an Orwellian future.’ ” — Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of ‘The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable’

That’s Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s perspective on bitcoin and the digital-currency fervor that is taking hold across the world.