fiat geld or straw into gold

In response to the growing interest and esteem of the Bitcoin, Der Spiegel reports, the German

Finance Ministry has gone so far as describing the “private-money,” while not on equal footing with legal-tender, as a unit of account—a measure of market value, which economists hold as one of the three essential mechanisms of exchange along with a being surrogate for the commerce of goods and services and a store of value. It seems like a small concession and possibly bestowed ahead of move for regulation and taxation, but I think that the declaration, though not the first instance of government scrutiny of this virtual currency, also acknowledges that the credence that any form of money enjoys is based solely on the faith of believers and is subject to the ebb and flow of crazes (although there is a powerful contingency interested in maintaining confidence), just like passing fads and fashions, more quickly displaced, and their artefacts.