Bitcoin isn’t the future. If anything, it’s a throwback to an earlier era, when private currencies circulated alongside government-sponsored money. In fact, if you strip away its technological trappings — the encryption, the peer-to-peer networks — and Bitcoin closely resembles these earlier private efforts.

This isn't a comforting historical parallel. The alternative currencies of the past are long gone, thanks to a decades-long campaign by governments aimed at monopolising the money supply. The lesson of their rise and fall is one that Bitcoin’s boosters would be foolish not to heed.

Outside of libertarian circles, it has become conventional wisdom that it is both natural and desirable for governments to monopolise the production and quantity of currency. Rulers and regents throughout history certainly believed as much, claiming that they alone could issue — and just as often, debase — coins used by their citizens.