http://www.coindesk.com/gallery-fire-destroys-thai-bitcoin-mining-facility/
supplementary:
http://qz.com/293418/an-enormous-bitcoin-mine-went-up-in-flames-affecting-the-entire-network/
This article outlines the effects of a large fire on "bitcoin(s?)," a source of online currency without a central bank. As a whole, Bitcoin has run from being ~ 1:1 (bitcoin to US dollar) to a nearly 345:1 exchange rate.
As a whole, bitcoins are an unprecedented innovation in economics; rarely (if ever) in history has there been a currency not backed by an international government. So far, though (and especially as the internet culture has taken off; graphs of the value of bitcoin since 2011 have shown nearly a 3000% increase in value over time), it has been fairly successful as a currency, because people have placed value in it ("arbitrarily," perhaps).
These articles show the effect that one fire can have on the bitcoin production as a whole. Since the currency is not backed by a national bank, it can dip and rise in value to somewhat significant extents, and because of the currency's bases (read article one) are based on CPU processing, the collapse of a serious "mining" operation can have a major effect on the value. As our course has evaluated recently, this severely effects exchange rates and purchasing power.
Since the crypto currency is still in its infancy stage, people are trying to figure out what really causes the value of Bitcoin to change other than the evident factors. In the last 2 years the currency has shown a lot of volatility, which has caused many people to move away from it for now, only to return once it has matured.
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