The author makes some good points, but if he wants to make this comparison, he needs to do so when Facebook shares and Bitcoin are trading at volumes the US Dol

The author makes some good points, but if he wants to make this comparison, he needs to do so when Facebook shares and Bitcoin are trading at volumes the US Dollar trades at. Most mainstream economists can't get past the idea of a currency or unit of value that isn't backed by a central authority to guarantee it's value. I would argue that a currency backed by a central authority may be more stable in the short-term, but in the long-term it is much riskier. This is because you are exposing yourself to the risk of the backing authority (e.g., the government) being incompetent or mismanaging the currency. Take the Euro for example. This is why countries experience things such as hyper-inflation and default on their debt. The issue is when a government is managing (read: controlling) the value of the currency, the market cannot correct itself when things go bad. If I had money to put into Bitcoin today, I would do so based on the news of Mt. Gox yesterday. Bitcoin will recover because there are more actors than just a central government putting their faith and support behind this currency. Facebook, on the other hand, is a stock which one day needs to justify its value based on how much money it earns. At it's P/E ratio today, I am not so sure it can do that.