Commentary What is the purpose of bitcoin? For some, it’s a transcendent, egalitarian force. For others, it’s a little more than a Ponzi scheme, a glorified gimmick full of false hope and empty promises. In July, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), no fan of bitcoin, issued a sweeping ban on crypto mining. More recently, Beijing declared all crypto-transactions illegal. Interestingly, but not surprisingly, the CCP has embraced blockchain, bitcoin’s underlying technology. Blockchain, a distributed software network, acts as a digital ledger. By eliminating the need for an intermediary, it allows secure, almost instantaneous peer to peer transfer of assets. Similar to the internet, blockchain is a technology that has helped to facilitate “the digital flow of information” and “facilitates the digital exchange of units of value,” according to researchers at the Blockchain Institute. Almost anything, from currencies to property ownership, “can be tokenized, stored, and exchanged on a blockchain network.” In the same …