Joel Weber, Editor, Bloomberg Businessweekġ These intermediaries include the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp., which owns most of the shares of most US companies on behalf of everyone else. What follows is his brilliant explanation of what this maddening, often absurd, and always fascinating technology means, and where it might go.
Which is why we asked the finest finance writer around, Matt Levine of Bloomberg Opinion, to write a cover-to-cover issue of Bloomberg Businessweek, something a single author has done only one other time in the magazine’s 93-year history (“ What Is Code?,” by Paul Ford). And if crypto isn’t going away, we’d better attempt to understand it. But crypto has dug itself into finance, into technology, and into our heads. If you’re a skeptic, this upside-down world is just a modern Ponzi scheme that’s going to end badly-and the recent “crypto winter” is evidence of its long-overdue ending. If you’re a disciple, this new dimension is the future. There was a moment not so long ago when I thought, “What if I’ve had this crypto thing all wrong?” I’m a doubting normie who, if I’m being honest, hasn’t always understood this alternate universe that’s been percolating and expanding for more than a decade now.
