These developments have been enough to turn me, over the last year, into essentially a full-time cryptocurrency reporter. It’s safe to say that’s a first for The Times.

Before this all began, I was covering financial markets and banks from New York. That gave me a grounding to begin understanding this, but Bitcoin has turned into a very different kind of financial market. At the banks, I kept hearing about how they were taking this technology seriously as something that might change their business in the long run. That is because beneath the digital tokens, Bitcoin introduced a new kind of crowdsourced financial infrastructure, known as the blockchain, that allows for the creation of money and financial records that aren’t maintained by any central authority like a bank or a government.

Claims about Bitcoin’s longevity differ dramatically. If you listen only to virtual currency aficionados, you would think that digital money is certain to dethrone the dollar as the global reserve currency and kill Wall Street, to boot. I get dozens of emails every day from entrepreneurs who tell me how they are going to use the technology introduced by Bitcoin to revolutionize the music industry, or shipping business, or even democracy itself. Meanwhile, very smart people like Warren Buffett and Joseph Stiglitz have continued to say that the whole thing is just a bubble waiting to burst.

How is a single journalist supposed to work through it all? It can feel a bit like being there at the invention of the stock market, but with no certainty that stocks would actually work as promised — and with everything hinging on software that few people understand.

Certainly one part of this requires understanding the technical details of how Bitcoin and other digital tokens work. The time I’ve spent grappling with the inner workings of virtual currencies has given me a sense of why so many computer scientists see the Bitcoin network as real technological innovation and not just a token that people buy and sell. I have a good stable of geeks who help walk me through the details when I get confused. And when I go to dinner parties it comes in handy — everyone these days wants to talk about how Bitcoin works and whether it is a bubble.