Michelle Thompson

Update: as this feature was in preparation, bitcoin was continuing its unprecedented surge, hitting a value of $10,000 on 29 November 2017

IN SEPTEMBER, on a luxurious carpet-covered stage at a hotel in New York City, the boss of the biggest investment bank in the US launched a savage attack on a notorious upstart. Bitcoin is a “fraud”, declared Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, useful only for get-rich-quick speculators and drug dealers. “Honestly, I am just shocked that anyone can’t see it for what it is.”

Plenty of responsible, law-abiding citizens were quick to disagree – and bitcoin’s value reached new heights in November, when it breached the $8000 mark for the first time. But whatever your view on the world’s most famous cryptocurrency, Dimon’s last comment inadvertently highlights something that often goes unsaid: no one really knows what bitcoin is, or what it is destined to become. The same goes for the technology on which it is based, known as the blockchain, hailed in some quarters as an engine of disruption on a par with the internet.

As things stand, bitcoin is all things to all people. But the community of software developers and “miners” that maintain it are engaged in a civil war, a clash of ideologies that will go a long way to deciding its fate. Meanwhile, the banks it was designed to sidestep seem to be toying with the idea that its underlying technology could be useful. Given the extent to which we are all at the mercy of the financial system, how it plays out has consequences for everyone. Can bitcoin rebuild …