Contributor(s): Dr Tatiana Cutts, Professor Nigel Dodd, Dr Garrick Hileman, Dr Natacha Postel-Vinay | Welcome to LSE IQ, the monthly podcast from the London School of Economics and Political Science. This is the podcast where we ask some of the leading social scientists - and other experts - to answer intelligent questions about economics, politics or society. In 2008 a person or group going under the pseudonym ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’ published a white paper setting out the fundamentals of a peer- to- peer electronic cash system called bitcoin. This would do away with the need to rely on financial institutions, acting as trusted third parties, to process electronic payments. Instead money could be sent directly from one party to another. Transactions would be verified and recorded permanently on the blockchain. This digital ledger would be distributed across a large network of computers and guard against a risk specific to digital currency - that it can be fraudulently spent twice. Technology, Satoshi Nakamoto claimed, would replace the need for trust. Bitcoin was the first decentralised cryptocurrency, and hundreds of others have been created since. In this episode of LSE IQ, Sue Windebank asks, are cryptocurrencies the future of money, a speculative bubble that will burst, or something else? This episode features: Dr Tatiana Cutts, Assistant Professor, LSE Department of Law Professor Nigel Dodd, LSE Department of Sociology; Dr Garrick Hileman, Research Associate, University of Cambridge and LSE, Dr Natacha Postel-Vinay, Assistant Professor, LSE Department of Economic History.