It’s a wild ride. Bitcoin is a very, very exciting experiment in getting rid of central banks. Getting rid of transaction fees for international fees are a fraction of what central banks earn and the traditional institutions charge.

I think there is huge potential, long-term potential in Bitcoin. But what we’ve seen over these last days is there’s a lot of kinks to work out in the fabric of the system.

You saw a correction. The correction looked huge if you look at it only in isolation – it corrected something like 60 per cent in the course of a day. Some people lost millions, literally. But the rest of the curve looks just as ridiculous… when you realise it lost 60pc of its value over a day…but that means it backtracked four days of value appreciation”! That’s whre the real ridicule of this curve hits you.

Is there a danger that because it was driven by speculators, it endangers the viability and perception of Bitcoin that it is seen only as a commodity and not a currency?

I think there’s a danger, but it’s short-term rather than long-term. There are people who have gone into this for the ideology of it, if you like: the idea that central banks who can start the printing presses and kill people’s savings are harmful for society. This technology solves that.

Now, Bitcoin is one crypto-currency. There might be competing crypto-currencies that one day overtake Bitcoin. We don’t know that yet. But let’s just speak of Bitcoin as crypto-currency in general.

Obviously, when something goes from $15-ish per unit to $170-ish per unit, which was the last price I saw – by the time this airs it might be $270 or it might be $150. That’s the volatility of it. When that happens, it’s going to attract people who want to make a quick buck. Is that good? Is that bad? I’m not sure that’s relevant. You just have to relate to it, because it’s a fact of life.

But long-term, I see a lot of new upstarts; I see a lot of new entrepreneurs, I see a lot of ideologically driven people wanting to build an infrastructure for Bitcoin. And that infrastructure is not there yet. But as it grows, I think the ecosystem gets better at handling these kinds of wild swings in the exchange rate, because those are not good for the currency. Those are not good for the economy.

As someone who has all of their savings tied up in Bitcoin, it must have been a thrilling but equally scary ride in the last few days.

Yes, absolutely. It’s totally prudent for me to disclose that I have a significant position in Bitcoin. It’s … I’m hoping for it to become retirement money, some 25 years out. Until then I’m trying not to touch it too much. But yeah, it’s completely wild. You start out with a post which has grown to nothing I’ve ever owned before, and then you have a very large amount of money just erased over dinner.

Does it frighten you, that it can be so volatile?

You just have to emotionally block it out, to be honest. It helps to think of it as toy money – although it isn’t, obviously – because if you start to wrap your head around losing six or seven digit amounts over dinner, then you’re just going to go insane. On the other hand, you just gained as much in the previous week, so it’s…

Does it ultimately have a long-term future that could make it compete equally alongside the euro or dollar, or even subvert them and become a single global currency?

The euro is primarily a currency within the European Union. You have a stability pact that effectively prevents printing presses from starting running to make the Euro an export product. The dollar doesn’t have that, so its dual purpose: it’s an exchange medium within the United States and also the trade currency, the reserve currency, of the world.

I think Bitcoin has the potential to become the de facto international trade currency, replacing the dollar in that area. I don’t think, for the foreseeable future, it can replace the dollar when buying a cup of coffee in Atlanta, or getting an espresso in Italy.

But you think it could become an Esperanto for the currency world?

That’s an excellent way of putting it.