WORLDVIEW: Climb aboard the Bitcoin express? Three stories and two pictures provide the answer

My favourite cousin Samantha is a wonderful human being. A devoted mother and one of the most generous souls you'll ever meet, she often empties her purse for strangers who in apparently greater need of her money. One time she and a friend walked 1 400km from Cape Town to Johannesburg to raise awareness about abused women and children.

While the admirable Sam is expert in many life skills, finance is not among them. She often needs to stretch her cash to the next payday. Not surprisingly, investing is not among her areas of interest. So when she dropped me a note about Bitcoin, it sparked a new avenue of inquiry for me.

Sam was clearly excited about the next best thing, wanting to know whether Bitcoin is "legit or a no-no….there are so many conflicting viewpoints." Her note set off the kind of alarm bells I hadn't heard ringing since the run-up to the 2008 and 1997 stock market crashes. In volume, the alarms reminded me of the 1987 Crash, the worst I'd seen ahead of which my 20-something financial journalist self was given more soapboxes than was healthy.

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