Contagion of the Bitcoin Narrative
Figure 3.2 plots the frequency of appearance in news articles of the words
bimetallism and Bitcoin. This figure is not a plot of a price but rather an indicator
of public attention. Both bimetallism and Bitcoin represent radical ideas for the
transformation of the monetary standard, with alleged miraculous benefits to the
economy. Each word is a marker for a constellation of stories that include not
only stories of theory but also human-interest stories. The plots for both words
look quite similar, and each is similar to a typical infective curve as seen in
Figure 3.1. We haven’t seen a definitive end of the Bitcoin narrative yet, as we
did with bimetallism; only time will tell.
FIGURE 3.2. Percentage of All Articles by Year Using the Word Bimetallism or Bitcoin in News and
Newspapers, 1850–2019
There is a remarkably similar epidemic pattern to the two popular “bi-” monetary innovation narratives a
century apart and similarity to the disease epidemic curve in Figure 3.1. Source: Author’s calculations using
data from ProQuest News & Newspapers.
We will discuss the remarkable bimetallism epidemic at length in chapter 12,
along with other narrative epidemics. For now, it is enough to know that

bimetallism and Bitcoin both invoke monetary theory. In both cases, an
enormous number of people began to regard a particular innovation as cool,
trendy, or cutting-edge. In both cases, the contagion is represented by a hump-
shaped curve resembling an epidemic curve. In contrast, in Figure 3.2, the curves
look more spiky (that is, compressed left to right) because the figure plots more
than a century of data, beyond the virulent periods. In fact, the bimetallism and
Bitcoin narratives played out over years, rather than weeks as in the case of
Ebola, but the same epidemic theory applies to all three. In the case of
bimetallism, we also see a smaller secondary epidemic in the 1930s, during the
Great Depression, but it never amounted to much. It was like a secondary
epidemic of a disease.
So narrative epidemics really mimic disease epidemics. And it is more than
just that. It is interesting also to note that there are co-epidemics of diseases and
narratives together. Medical researchers in the Congo during a 2018 outbreak of
Ebola linked the high contagion to narratives reaching the population. Over 80%
of the interviewees said they had heard misinformation that “Ebola does not
exist,” “Ebola is fabricated for financial gains,” and “Ebola is fabricated to
destabilize the region.” For each of these statements, over 25% said they
believed the narrative. These narratives discouraged prevention measures and
amplified the disease.5 The two epidemics fed on each other to grow large.
The appendix to this book looks at theories and models from epidemiology,
including the original 1927 Kermack-McKendrick SIR model, to help explain
the spread of economic narratives. These models divide the population into
compartments: susceptible to the disease (S), infected and spreading the disease
(I), and recovered or dead (R). All of the models feature contagion rates and
recovery rates. We can think of Figures 3.1 and 3.2 as evidence on the number of
infectives (I). These models tend to predict hump-shaped paths for an epidemic,
like that in Figure A.1 in the appendix, page 291, even if there is no medical
intervention at all. The epidemic will eventually start weakening because the
percentage of the population that has still not been exposed to the disease is
declining, bringing down the contagion rate below the recovery rate.
In the appendix we will see also that the time to peak and the duration of an
epidemic can vary widely, determined by model parameters. The Ebola epidemic
ran for a matter of months in a given locale, but we should not assume that all
epidemics must follow that same short timetable. In other words, the Ebola
epidemic could have stretched on for years if the initial contagion rate had been

lower, so long as contagion did not fall below recovery.
For example, epidemiologists have described the acquired immune deficiency
syndrome (AIDS) caused by the human immune deficiency virus (HIV) as not
very contagious, and they have recommended that health-care professionals
should not shrink from treating HIV patients for fear of catching it.6 AIDS tends
to be transmitted only in certain circumstances involving unsafe practices. AIDS
has been a slow epidemic, developing over decades, even slower than the
bimetallism and Bitcoin epidemics, and it is able to grow despite low contagion
because it has a smaller recovery rate: an HIV-infected person can continue to
infect others for many years.