The recent Bank of England Quarterly Bulletin has a really nice article on the City of Glasgow Bank crash which occurred in October 1878 - click here for the article and see below for an interview with one of the the authors. This article draws very heavily on my 2008 paper on the City of Glasgow Bank crash and my book Banking in Crisis. The authors do a great job of outlining seven lessons from the crash for modern-day policymakers.
According to Robert Shiller , speaking at Davos, Bitcoin is a perfect example of a bubble - story here . Shiller sees Bitcoin as a backwards step in the evolution of money. George Selgin , a free banker, takes an opposing view - click here . Although he doesn't believe that Bitcoin is money, he sees its development as a fascinating turn in the evolution of money. In particular, he lauds the fact that Bitcoin production is constrained and cannot be infinite. There is a short video below where Bitcoin explain how it works.