© 2024 Public Radio East
Public Radio For Eastern North Carolina 89.3 WTEB New Bern 88.5 WZNB New Bern 91.5 WBJD Atlantic Beach 90.3 WKNS Kinston 88.5 WHYC Swan Quarter 89.9 W210CF Greenville
Donate
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
US

Episode 891: Who Won The Bet Over Bitcoin?

By David Kestenbaum,
Jacob Goldstein
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."

Find us: Twitter / Facebook / Instagram

Subscribe to our show onApple Podcasts, Pocket Casts and NPR One.

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

US
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
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