Are Bitcoins Already Doomed?

It wasn’t too long ago that many were speaking of Bitcoin as the ‘next big thing’ regarding online poker and that this ‘untouchable’ payment method was the future and the solution regarding the at times troublesome act of moving of money from player to room and back again. However the simple fact is that where money is involved it is never long before any payment method gets looked at by the major regulatory bodies and of course governments, and this, according to economist Simon Johnson is exactly what’s happened.

A Huge Political Backlash?

Speaking at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Johnson warned that Bitcoin may have already had its time in the sunshine and in the coming months it would be attracting more and more attention from the powers that be. His exact words when speaking of new digital currencies as a whole were, “There is going to be a big political backlash, and the question is whether the people behind those currencies are ready for that and have their own political strategy.”

The cause of digital currencies was in no way helped when the US government recently took down the Silk Road where trading of illegal drugs such as LSD and Heroin was openly taking place, using of course new digital currency. The above does not mean that Johnson is against this new form of currency, it is simply stating that in order for it to have any degree of success then users should think about regulation, before governments and banks take it into their own hands. There is however one huge hurdle, in that do Bitcoin users really want any form of regulation, and does that defeat the whole object of the currency itself.