John Law

John Law is an 18th century Scottish entrepreneur, financial engineer and gambler. Having reformed the French economy, invented paper currency, state banks, the Mississippi Bubble and other ideas essential to modern economics, he took three hundred years off in a small cottage outside Bude. He has returned to write for CoinDesk on the foibles of digital currency.

John Law

Latest from John Law


Markets

Bitcoin: here to stay but not immune from terrible ideas

If you want to say when bitcoin got big, you could do a lot worse than picking this week.

china-yuan

Markets

Lock Up Your Lucre, the Best Democracy Bitcoins Can Buy, and Liquid Asset Conversion

John Law advises keeping your bitcoin safe, ponders bitcoin funding for political parties and recommends drinking wine (responsibly).

vault dial

Markets

Bitcoin price could be highway robbery, PayPal's quandary, and how to stop a nasty rumour

John Law is no stranger to hold 'em ups, even cryptocurrency ones.

bitcoin robbery

Markets

Big names’ big bitcoin bet, bugs bite bright idea, and forgetful fjord fellow finds fame

Circle receives $9m, a major flaw is detected in Namecoin and a forgetful Norwegian gets rich.

man-money-winning

Markets

The downside of up, a miner problem, and robot overlords - ahoy!

BTC price increases are not always good, a cryptocurrency arms race approaches, and bitcoin robots will rule the world.

robot

Markets

Chinese whispers, Chinese hackers and Chinese goats

John Law examines the impact of recent DDoS attacks, Baidu, and Google Glass on the bitcoin world.

dog wearing Google Glass

Markets

Remote control, rank craziness and revolution 2.0

John Law's week in bitcoin: coffee commerce, Capital One chocolate coins, and UK Silk Road users arrested.

coffee paper

Markets

Sex, drugs and racks of beef

Now Silk Road is offline, why not spend your spare bitcoins on ethically farmed beef and erotic bitcoin novels?

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Markets

Earn it, stash it, fritter it away: bitcoin's role in the journey of life

Do cryptosalaries and bitcoin gambling mirror early hunter-gatherer lifestyles? And how relevant are Dark Wallet's ideals, really?

hunter gatherer

Markets

Anonymous iPhone hacking and bitcoin's three most important letters

As a consensus forms over the ISO code for bitcoin, John Law is perplexed by Apple's lack of wallets.

Apple

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