The value of things: miscellaneous thoughts on bitcoins, umbrellas, and ‘Hamilton’ tickets

One of the prominent stories of last year was the skyrocketing price of things called bitcoins. On January 1, 2017, a single bitcoin was worth about $1,000. Today, it’s worth about $13,000, and it neared $19,000 at one point. (Here’s a graph.) That’s pretty crazy, considering that it’s not easy to say what a bitcoin is or why it’s worth anything at all. If you go by its price, it sounds like a speculative investment, yet it was designed to be a currency. In fact, it’s both—like light, a bitco...