In the 2001 film Donnie Darko, we learned that a "famous linguist" declared "cellar door" to be the most beautiful phrase in the English language. If such a statement can be true, then the word "crypto" must be a top contender for the most enjoyable word in the English language.
Fundamentally, the word conveys a sense of mystery, like the burial places of medieval monks or the campy 1990s television series Tales from the Crypt. But it also confers on its users a certain mystical power; there is no finer coup de grâce than to lob a "you're a crypto-[insert pejorative noun here]" into the opposing camp.
But it must be because of something more than the sheer exhilaration of wielding such a dangerous word - with its super-cool alliterative properties - that "cryptocurrency" has become practically ubiquitous in the news these days.
Perhaps nothing defines today's zeitgeist better than the arrival of a borderless currency controlled by no central authority, available to criminals, spies, and civil libertarians alike.
The meteoric rise and subsequent drop in the price of Bitcoin earlier this year, its association with the contraband website Silk Road, and recent revelations that it was used to finance the Russian intelligence services' email hacks during the 2016 presidential election, have all sullied the reputation of cryptocurrencies.
No one better illustrates the link between crime and cryptocurrency than the bad boy of Bitcoin, Alexander Vinnik. Arrested last summer at the behest of the U.S. Justice Department while vacationing in Greece, Mr. Vinnik has spent the past year fighting extradition to the U.S., pleading guilty to crimes in his native Russia, and even dodging at least one assassination attempt. Following a lengthy appeals process in the Greek courts, it seems he will soon be extradited to France to face trial for crimes involving his Bitcoin platform.
All the regulatory bodies in the land have begun to weigh in on how cryptocurrencies should be regulated and the crimes associated with them should be prosecuted. The Justice Department and FinCEN are treating cryptocurrency exchanges as money services businesses, subject to anti-money laundering regulations. The SEC has announced it will treat initial coin offerings as securities, while the CFTC believes cryptocurrencies are commodities under their jurisdiction.
Nevertheless, cryptocurrencies remain shrouded in confusion, with no simple answers. Is cryptocurrency money? What legitimate purpose does it fulfill? How should holdings in cryptocurrencies be valued for reporting purposes? How should they be taxed?
And while the future of cryptocurrencies may be unclear, most observers are bullish on the blockchain, the technology supporting most cryptocurrencies. It is not anonymous and seems to be providing a way to revolutionize the way transactions will be tracked and stored across all kinds of applications, providing new levels of trust and transparency that have been heretofore outsourced to independent third parties.
One thing is sure, though. So much is hidden, so much is unknown, so much is uncertain. In short, so much involving cryptocurrency remains, well, cryptic.
