There’s no reason to mourn the fall of bitcoin prices. Anyone who is crying over bitcoin’s recent face-plant – losing one-third of its value in two days – must be a speculator. Gambling is gambling – sorry, pal. If you’re celebrating the price drop because of schadenfreude, or just straight-up skepticism about the cryptocurrency itself, you’re missing the point, too.

The nosediving price of bitcoin matters in the short term because rattled confidence hurts any currency, especially a relative newborn that is only used to grease a tiny sliver of global commerce.



In the long run, however, the price swings won’t matter. The currency called bitcoin itself may not even matter.



But cryptocurrency will, and likewise the technology underlying it. In a way, bitcoin’s wild fluctuations in price – and coming through them onto calmer waters – could ultimately illuminate the staying power and significance of cryptocurrency.

First, though, the near-term doubt and skittishness catalyzed by the price drop: bitcoin has a reputation problem not only because it’s so young, but also because it lacks institutional credibility.

The bitcoin faithful have argued that price oscillations are to be expected during these early years.



As more investors get involved, and as bitcoin’s utility as a medium of exchange increases, it will theoretically become less attractive to speculators, thereby stabilizing in price.



Yet it isn’t clear exactly how bitcoin will grow if everyday people are spooked. “The ongoing price volatility is a real barrier to wider adoption, at least on the consumer side,” says Marc Hochstein, editor-in-chief of American Banker. “That was true at $10 and it was true at $1,000.”

So yes, rattled confidence in the value of bitcoin matters, some, but this is not some do-or-die moment or comeuppance for the currency. On the contrary, it’s a blip, and a distraction from the meatier discussions about what decentralized currency is, and how the technology that powers it might influence our lives in the future.

The thing is, bitcoin is not just bitcoin the currency. It is a platform, a digital scaffolding upon which software engineers can build all kinds of novel applications, money-related or otherwise. It’s called the block chain, and this core innovation is what has entrepreneurs and investors so enamored.

This week in San Francisco I met with Marwan Forzley, an entrepreneur, payments industry veteran and, most recently, founder of a recently launched startup called Align Commerce.



Forzley, who sold a previous company to Western Union before going to work for the money-transfer giant, thinks he has crafted a superior way for parties to move money between countries and currencies. It’s swift because it bypasses SWIFT, the banking industry’s creaky messaging system for international transactions.

Align uses bitcoin’s blockchain. When company A in Tokyo sends a dollar-denominated payment to company B in Chicago, the funds get converted from yen into bitcoin, and then immediately converted from bitcoin into dollars before making their way to the payee’s bank account.



The bitcoins are like a freight car, carrying the funds (information, really) on the silky-smooth rails of the bitcoin network.



Forzley says his business is essentially unaffected by the exchange rate of bitcoin on any given day, and he has zero interest in the anti-statist view espoused by a vocal minority of bitcoin users.

Maybe as more speculators get burned trying to gamble on the exchange rate, and as the public grows bored with headlines about bitcoin’s fluctuating price, people will want to dig deeper.



The price is so shaky – yet the currency hasn’t collapsed. Why? And why does investment in bitcoin-related companies like Forzley’s continue as if price instability weren’t an issue?



The answer, I think, is the latent power of that underlying protocol. Bitcoin gets the headlines, but the special sauce is the block chain.

So go crazy, bitcoin exchange rate. Soon enough, more people will see that you aren’t the real story.