Chris Skinner is a banking and technology veteran who serves as the chairman of the Financial Services Club, a group created in 2004 to address the future of companies that serve financial markets. The world is still very confused about bitcoin. For example, some press are still writing the old stories about the phenomena as an investment: Man buys $27 worth of bitcoin, forgets about them, finds they’re now worth $886,000.
It makes for a good headline, but reinforces the view that bitcoin is just some basketcase currency, rather than a currency that should put into a basket of currencies.
This will change.
In fact, some banks are already starting to say bitcoin good, blockchain good , rather than bitcoin bad, blockchain good . Changing tide
On this note, there’s a really interesting commentary from Deutsche Bank, which released a research note this week .
In the note, analyst Heike Mai notes that "the original idea of bitcoin – to create a peer-to-peer scheme that is independent of intermediaries and central agents – is to some degree being overhauled by real life. The bitcoin ecosystem now includes a number of financial intermediaries, like wallet providers and exchanges, and these show a trend towards concentration."
All this in the same week as Satoshi Nakamoto has been identified as an Australian academic called Craig Steven Wright, or is he? Some say that Mr Wright was part of an extortion scheme .
We shall see, but it seems to me that Satoshi is still to be found, and Cornell Professor Emin Gün Sirer kind of tells us as it is: Who cares ?Anyways, attending a discussion about blockchain and bitcoin earlier this week, I heard the simplest summary of what it’s all about.Bitcoin is a currency, a method of value exchange and a smart way to record contracts. […]
