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>"Cryptocurrencies are essentially neither money nor a financial product, but an example of what Nobel laureate Robert Shiller calls a 'contagious narrative': a contagious story in which people believe because other people believe in it."

How is this different from money or the financial markets? Why do those continue to exist if not for the belief we collectively have in them? And why is that only a problem for bitcoin?

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> How is this different from money or the financial markets?

A big difference is that the sovereign requires you to pay taxes in a given currency at the threat of punishment. So long as everyone needs to pay the taxman, the currency that the tax man accepts is gonna have at least some value.

Only to the tax man...

There have been and still are(?) economies where the local currency was only used for 'official' business, and most trade was carried out in another, more stable currency.

They can make this difference disappear by accepting bitcoin then.

Taxes will still be calculated in the local currency, not in BTC.

Because the Netherlands make significant money from funnelling money to their tax havens. If people can do it themselves with bitcoin, how are these tax-pros supposed to live? /s

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