Bitcoin is sponsoring a college football bowl game this year, officially dubbed the "Bitcoin Bowl." And because sports fans love mascots, "Mr. Bitcoin" is now apparently a thing that exists. All around the game's festivities, people are posing for photos with the rotund representation of the cryptocurrency.

So far in 2014, Bitcoin has lost more value than the Russian ruble. Wolfers is absolutely right that Bitcoin is a poor store of value. And people who prefer the currency as a hedge against the inflationary tendencies of the dollar are deeply confused.

Bitcoin prices have dropped almost 60% since January, outpacing the Russian ruble. Critics say that’s proof digital currency has failed. Ignore them. Bitcoin’s price is irrelevant to the key question of whether the underlying technology will disrupt finance. There are many signs it will.

The ruble collapsed by 10 percent against the U.S. dollar Monday earning the Russian currency the dubious laurels of the world’s worst-performing currency this year. The Russian currency has now fallen 49.3 percent against the greenback since January, according to data from the Moscow Exchange. The drop takes it below the Ukrainian hryvna, which has weakened 47.9 percent in 2014.

There was plenty of ugliness to be found in the markets this year. Ukranian and Venezuelan sovereign debt. High-yield, energy-related corporate bonds. Argentine pesos. Russian rubles. Greek stocks. But none of these investments has been as atrociously awful as bitcoin, the heavily hyped crypto-currency that stormed onto the financial scene in the last few years, threatening to disrupt the cornerstone of global finance that is fiat currency.

The US government has been seriously studying bitcoin for about two years now. The FBI knows how to seize the digital currency. The Marshal’s Service knows how to sell it. The IRS knows how to tax it. And now, the Federal Reserve should copy it. So says James Angel, a professor of economics at Georgetown University. He thinks the government should create what he calls “bitdollar,” a bitcoin-like digital currency that’s backed by the US dollar.

Microsoft, the famous multinational corporation that powers much of the world’s computing infrastructure with its Windows OS, now accepts Bitcoin online for its digital products. Microsoft users, in America only for now, can even fund their Microsoft/Windows Live or XBox Live accounts using Bitcoin, at the current exchange rate.

An array of virtual currencies are making their presence known.

Did you know the Bitcoin community is riven by tension, drama, competing agendas, and at least two starkly different visions of our economic future? That even as major banks who thought of Bitcoin as snake oil re-assess its blockchain technology as a major breakthrough, and smart money pours into blockchain startups, the few at its cutting edge are increasingly divided against themselves?

When Travis Purrington, an Idaho-born designer, embarked in 2011 on a project to redesign the dollar as part of his master’s degree...

The rouble suffered its biggest one-day decline since 1998 as oil prices continued to fall on Monday, escalating fears about the Russian economy.

A majority of all bitcoins in circulation have not moved in over six months, according to a new analysis.

Any serious Bitcoin user will preach the benefits of cold storage: keeping the bulk of your bitcoins offline somewhere, like on an encrypted USB stick, or even printed on a piece of paper. The idea is that by keeping that data offline, it’s far less susceptible to being hacked.

Stephen Poloz puts his signature on newly printed Canadian money. Could he one day also put his digital signature on Bank of Canada e-cash? The central bank said Thursday it’s exploring the “potential merits” of getting into the e-money business amid worries that bitcoin and other unregulated digital currencies could eventually hamper its ability to conduct monetary policy and undermine the financial system.

I have invested in Bitcoin because I believe in its potential, the capacity it has to transform global payments is very exciting.It has been obvious to us all for quite some time that people aren’t satisfied with the business as usual approach adopted by the major payment networks.

Most people think of bitcoin, if they think about it at all, as a currency—a means of digital exchange, or perhaps a speculative investment. But forget everything you know, because the technology underlying bitcoin has the potential to be a much greater disruptive force than the cryptocurrency itself. Investors and technologists think the technology could replace huge aspects of the financial and insurance industries, and eventually even corporate management teams...

Darkcoin, bitcoin's more anonymous cousin, is increasingly being used for online drug deals. Ironically, this could actually help take it mainstream.

According to researchers, the card system developed by VISA for use in the United Kingdom can be tricked into approving any transaction up to 999,999.99 as long as it's requested in a foreign currency.

With more and more people paying with credit cards and their smartphones, Denmark’s central bank Nationalbanken says it no longer pays to print banknotes or mint coins.

Viennese artist Michael Marcovici's Rat Traders uses reward, punishment and selective breeding to create a strain of lab-rat that can predict the movement of international currency markets.