I would really like to read a well-researched answer to this question. I've heard various theories around instability in Puerto Rico, and people using it to mov

I would really like to read a well-researched answer to this question. I've heard various theories around instability in Puerto Rico, and people using it to move money out of China. I have no idea if there's any evidence to support those theories. I really want to understand some of the economics behind the value of a Bitcoin. Some people say that it's actually worthless, but that can't be true. It lets people move practically unlimited amounts of money anywhere in the world for a relatively small fee. It also provides immutable data that can be used to verify records. I actually spent this weekend adding blockchain verification to my document generation service [1]. It was actually pretty amazing to look at a Bitcoin transaction [2], and realize that this data has so much authenticity and permanence. Not only does it guarantee that my document existed at a certain point in time, but that hash will probably be preserved in the blockchain for the rest of human history. That one bitcoin transaction cost a lot of money (0.000846 BTC, or $6.95 USD), but it verifies a large number of records by using a merkle tree. [3] I have no idea how these fees relate to the fiat price, but that must be one factor. Also the price of electricity around the world. There's a lot of speculation and "tulip mania" too, but even if you ignore all of that, I think it's a very interesting thing to research. [1] https://formapi.io/ https://formapi.io/ [2] https://live.blockcypher.com/btc/tx/4dc1ef829128355fdbbf3afbf0de854778e0e027481e9a5ff53a64d9ab39a78c/ https://live.blockcypher.com/btc/tx/4dc1ef829128355fdbbf3afb... [3] https://chainpoint.org/ https://chainpoint.org/