CrunchWeek 2013 In Review: Bitcoin’s Big Rise, Edward Snowden And The NSA


It’s the end of the year, which is always a time for reflection — auld lang syne and all that jazz. So for the next couple of weeks, CrunchWeek, the show that brings a few TechCrunch writers together to dish about the hottest tech stories of the past seven days, is actually going to be more like a CrunchYear. We’ll be talking about the biggest stories that really defined the state of the tech world in 2013.

In this first installment of our two-part year in review, Leena Rao, Ryan Lawler and I talk about the meteoric rise of Bitcoin, the digital currency based on an open source software protocol that seemed to capture the world’s attention over the course of the year as it hit staggeringly high valuations (amid lots of price volatility) and secured big-name supporters, and the revelations leaked in June by previously-unknown whistleblower Edward Snowden that the National Security Administration has been spying on the digital habits of millions of Americans — with the help of some of the tech industry’s biggest and most trusted companies.