London must seize the opportunity and embrace bitcoins

The City, with its long tradition of expertise in innovative, global finance, is the natural centre for trading and investing in digital money, says Matthew Lynn.

Very soon, thanks to the statelet of Alderney in the Channel Islands, you may be able to have a bitcoin you can put in your pocket, rather than just hold on your smartphone. Alderney is working with the Royal Mint and the Treasury on a special issue of a physical version of the digital currency for the spring of next year.

Whether it gets the go-ahead, and whether there will be any demand, remains to be seen after all, the whole point about bitcoins is that they are virtual rather than real. The techno-nerds who are the greatest enthusiasts for computer-generated money may be as keen on an old-fashioned metal version as they are on typewriters, letters with stamps, or news that comes to them via dead trees.

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Matthew Lynn

Matthew Lynn is a columnist for Bloomberg, and writes weekly commentary syndicated in papers such as the Daily Telegraph, Die Welt, the Sydney Morning Herald, the South China Morning Post and the Miami Herald. He is also an associate editor of Spectator Business, and a regular contributor to The Spectator. Before that, he worked for the business section of the Sunday Times for ten years. 

He has written books on finance and financial topics, including Bust: Greece, The Euro and The Sovereign Debt Crisis and The Long Depression: The Slump of 2008 to 2031. Matthew is also the author of the Death Force series of military thrillers and the founder of Lume Books, an independent publisher.