Is Bitcoin Money?
By Amelia S.
Catholic schools week ended last week with the science fair. I’m in 8th grade and each 7th and 8th grader had to complete a science fair project that we’ve been working on since Christmas. Back in December, my mom made me watch the documentary Banking on Bitcoin on Netflix. I didn’t know anything about crypto-currencies but I thought that Bitcoin and blockchain (the technology that makes Bitcoin secure) were pretty interesting. My mom suggested I try to make my science fair project about it. My teacher and I weren’t sure how to do this, but she gave me some leverage to figure it out. As I did more digging, I quickly realized that Bitcoin is a lot more complicated than I thought.
I needed to come up with a testable hypothesis. I brainstormed ideas about what I could test that would be interesting. It came down to, “If Bitcoin is a currency, then I should be able to spend it.” A currency is defined as a “system of money in general use.” Is Bitcoin money? To test it, I would have to actually get some Bitcoin! Then I’d be able to test my hypotheses it by going around town (and online) to see if I could spend my Bitcoin. I was pretty excited. My mom stepped in to help get the account. I got online to try to find places that would take it. Starbucks’ website said yes, but when i got there it didn’t work. The people at Starbucks (and pretty much everywhere else) had never even heard of Bitcoin. Or if they had, they had no idea how to process a transaction with it. My project was pretty much a bust. The only place that would accept my Bitcoin was overstock.com...and I have a new watch to show for it.
Although my hypothesis did not work out and my science fair project did not win, I learned a lot. I learned that Bitcoin cannot be put in a category, but is instead, its own concept. I originally thought that because Bitcoin is call a cyber “currency” that it must actually be a currency. But I think it behaves more like a commodity. It is not backed by anything. It uses complicated technology to make itself secure. In the end, I learned about a concept that is challenging the financial markets and governments. I’m pretty sure this project will help me later in life, even if the Bitcoin we bought and couldn’t spend is now worth 30% less than when we started.