Bitcoin: Bubble or Bank?

Bitcoin: Bubble or Bank?Call it a currency without a country.

Bitcoins … digital tokens that are traded over the Internet … can’t be stuffed in your wallet, or crammed in your pocket.

But that hasn’t stopped the virtual coinage from sending ripples through the financial world.

Early this year you could buy a bitcoin online for $15.

But its value has surged — spiking upwards of $250 this week.

With more and more people looking to shelter themselves from a jittery global economy an increasing number of these virtual bucks are finding real-world homes.

Just ask Alex Likhtenstein.

He co-owns EVR Bar in Manhattan, and allows people to pay their tabs in bitcoin.

For more on this, we were joined by Jesse Hirsh.

He is a technology correspondent for CBC.He’s also co-founder of Academy of the Impossible, a peer-to-peer learning facility in Toronto.