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Episode 891: Who Won The Bet Over Bitcoin?

By Jacob Goldstein,
David Kestenbaum
Published February 1, 2019 at 5:58 PM EST
A waitress shows how to pay for a coffee with bitcoins.
PIERRE TEYSSOT
/
AFP/Getty Images
A waitress shows how to pay for a coffee with bitcoins.

In 2014, we brought two people together to make a bet over the future of bitcoin.

Ben Horowitz, a venture capitalist whose firm had already invested millions of dollars in cryptocurrency companies, thought bitcoin would change the way people bought stuff online. Felix Salmon, a financial journalist, took the other side. He thought bitcoin's rising price would make people unlikely to use it to buy stuff.

Recently, we asked a polling company to conduct a nationally representative survey of the public's use of bitcoin, and we're ready to announce those results. Today on the show, we declare a winner.

Music: "Alright Alright," "Todo Mundo," "Edge of Fear" and "Hit Me Back."

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Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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Jacob Goldstein
Jacob Goldstein is an NPR correspondent and co-host of the Planet Money podcast. He is the author of the book Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing.
See stories by Jacob Goldstein
David Kestenbaum
David Kestenbaum is a correspondent for NPR, covering science, energy issues and, most recently, the global economy for NPR's multimedia project Planet Money. David has been a science correspondent for NPR since 1999. He came to journalism the usual way — by getting a Ph.D. in physics first.
See stories by David Kestenbaum