Digital Value

Digital artifacts — humanly-constructed items that inhabit our computers and networks — suffer an unfortunate reputation as being virtual and therefore unreal, and all too easy to reproduce on the cheap. These features together prompt the question of this article: if digital artifacts can be reproduced for free, and if they are unreal, why do they have economic value at all? Using a focal case study of bitcoin — the most unreal digital artifact of them all, and one that has been copied and pasted a thousand times over — I answer the question. Some digital artifacts can't be copied on the cheap, as it turns out, and they are real enough to be useful.