Yeah I know what you're thinking - "please, not another goddamn conspiracy theory", right? Well, I'll do my best to make this article as different and as logical as possible, although, it might be a little more political/economical than technical, but still informative.
OK, now almost everyone knows that at the end of 2017, one BTC cost almost 20,000 $ and that it was a very good investment years ago, but how did it all start and for what purpose?
Before I really begin, I would like to notice that all bitcoin transactions are publicly visible by everyone, thus bitcoin isn't an anonymous currency by nature, like Dash/Zcash for instance, as far as you don't publish your public key with your identity (like for donations).
The legend is that it was created by a Japanese as a decentralized cryptocurrency based on blockchain technology. I do believe that it could be done by a single man (as I reinvented blockchain in my time), but I don't really see the reason for staying anonymous, though some "big" projects creators preferred to hide (like Linux PaX), in this case it won't change anything since, the "Pandora's box" is already open and there is pretty much nothing the creator can do if something will go wrong (the community still has to accept some kind of "soft-fork", like it was with Ethereum or on altcoin with a larger block size (think Litecoin)).
For me this means only one thing - nobody suppose to know who made it and thus, the reason behind it.
So, who actually created it? You may hear different versions : cypherpunks, NSA, CIA, illuminati, lizards, aliens, you name it ...
I will go with a more-or-less realistic assumption, but in order to understand my statement, I have to mention a little bit of history.
What is currency nowadays? Just a paper that people believe is somehow valuable and represents a financial debt, like dollars. But before they were backed by real gold (taken from citizens), you could go to bank and say - "Here's thousand backs, now give me some real coins", the same was in Soviet Union, you could exchange rubles for a shiny metal, a paper was an equivalent for gold. But after a dozen years a man called Charles de Gaulle tried to do it for all the dollars in France, such exploit made USA lose much gold and then they (more precisely, Federal Reserve System, which not belongs to state) understood that it wasn't a very smart idea after-all. So, they just started printing papers, hoping that people will still believe that they are valuable, and later with IT, they just simply making zeroes and ones, without any "material base" what-so-ever. Backing dollars with gold as intrinsic value was an attempt to universalize it and force everyone to use it by USA, which became the richest country with the largest gold reserve just after the WWII.
A currency is itself a debt, but do you know how much USA owns? Very, very much, more than there are resources in the whole world, which will eventually lead to its inevitable economical collapse and America won't ever be "great again", while printing all these bucks. So, as time passes, country has to get rid-of all this debt, a war isn't a bad solution as debt burning (I should mention Ukraine ... maybe later), but after the financial crisis, a solution should be found quickly. Yet, what if we made a new currency related to dollar as its alternative and force everyone to use it instead while keeping a big part of it? Eureka! Total control. Surely, we will have to give the blockchain technology as well, but that's an acceptable price.
OK, enough politics for now, let's go technical, let's speak about hacking, although malware creation isn't really hacking, but still related to the topic.
Some malware researchers/analysts have found some links between some ransomware attacks and government hackers (specifically Equation Group (NSA-TAO)), I may even speculate that some of their tools were leaked on purpose as a justification/endorsement for such attacks (like, maybe, 9/11?), or that a state should actually arrest someone who stopped such attack, or that stocks are hacked not just by criminals and finally, that "anonymous black-markets" are actually law enforcement honey-pots. Not even mentioning a strange recursive hash theft/backdoor discovered recently. Also, Crypto Dip in the middle of January 2018 by "banning" cryptocurrencies, has cut their prices almost ten times for some cases, but in some "particular" cases, the price raised a lot and, where truly Silk-Road seized bitcoins went? So many questions, yet such uncertainty.
An alternative version is that it's just another pyramid that spiked-up after a financial crysis, like it was in USSR in case of MMM, but in this case, it's going to be worldwide and there is no one to put to jail for it. You might ask however, how such scheme could even work? Well, it's pretty good illustrated in a book called Dunno on the Moon with "The Society of Giant Plants" as example, but to put it in the nut shell, let's say that a company which costs 100 thousand dollars sells its 100 shares, that would mean that each share cost one thousand dollars, and the price varies regarding multiple criteria, such as being successful or not. The thing is that if people will buy the shares, they will become less and less available and since people want more and more, the shares will raise in price because, demand creates offer. On the other hand, if suddenly the price will go down for whatever reason and if everyone decides to sell back the shares, while nobody wants to buy it, the shares will cost almost nothing and drop in price even lower. And it works, because of such psychological phenomenon as greediness, which is the base for almost any pyramid (and probably the only intrinsic value of cryptocurrencies), especially if it's heaped by media (like YouTube).
After-all, currency is indeed currency when you can buy something with it or exchange for green American presidents of Colon... I mean Columbus country. Finally, even if it's a non-state-sponsored pyramid, the state itself doesn't seems to be worrying about a potential dollar concurrency too much, it only tries to profit from it.
That was probably pretty simplified, yet pretty clear, but how bitcoin price is determined since, it's not material-based and when did the first stock exchange begun to accept it? If I'm not wrong, its wide recognition and acceptance begun in 2013, the same year when the gold price went tremendously down for the first time in history, coincidence?
Now, let's take another powerful state - Russia. They want to make their own cryptocurrency, some kind of cryptoruble. For me the reason is pretty obvious - total control. If the blockchain technology will be state-centralized and the only authorized, which Russia wants, the state will control all the economical flow in the country, every payment of everyone.
The justification for such maneuver is not only to "fight terrorism" cliché, but to fight corruption for example, so the intent may seem to be good. However, one should realize that he/she/it would have practically no privacy of market since, everything what goes from and to his/her/its account is state-monitored. Money is power, and Russia will take it from its citizens sooner or later, just like Soviet Union took private property. Suppression of private property is an attribute of Socialism ("from each one an ability, to each one a work"), which is a transitional step from Capitalism to Communism, history repeats itself ... by spiral (according to Marx at least).
Will it be good or bad? I'm not predicting anything, but I just worry about the vectors Russia's heading (and hope that it will not take an example of Estonia's digitalization mistakes). Considering the CIS summit of december 2017, that was probably a subtle proposition to create a common economical space, thus one could predict a Union of Crypto Socialist Republics - UCSR :) and... another cold war phase, subtly declared by Atlantic Council report.
Do I have bitcoins at the moment? No, and I discourage everyone to buy and use them not only for political, but also for philosophical reasons.
A currency is not a merchandise that can be traded on stock, you suppose to buy things with money, but not to buy money with another money, it contradicts the currency intent and creates problems, bitcoin isn't an exception, so please stop being greedy and financing economical slavery along with capitalistic pyramid.
"But hey! It's just a theory! A conspiracy theory! Thanks for reading!"
P.S. soon I might make a proposition of a new economical model based on cryptography and sociology.
