Photo: Bank of England (Photo: Bloomberg) Gavin Smith This guest article was written by Gavin Smith. With 25 years’ experience working in financial markets, Gavin Smith is First Global Credit’s CEO and the futurist guiding the company so that it will grow alongside the developing digital currency capital market. His experience developing and managing global risk for one of the world’s largest physical commodity traders, has given him the skills to build the risk management framework that underpins all First Global services.
Government and commercial banks have been using both overt and covert strategies to devalue and if possible halt the adoption of public blockchain technology. The outward face ranges from the cautious acceptance of digital currencies by the UK and Hong Kong to the downright protectionist strategy of New York State through the Bitlicensing laws.
The covert strategies are typified by a three pronged approach: (1) Exploit any opportunity to denigrate bitcoin regardless of accuracy usually based on the stability of bitcoins or legitimacy of use. For instance, linking bitcoins to terrorism or drug purchase. (2) Broadcast generalised statements supporting the idea that private blockchains have all the benefits of the public blockchains and that banks are better custodians of the public’s welfare than the inexperienced organizations driving public blockchain development. (3) Then into this framework, publicize specific initiatives like RSCoin, a centrally controlled digital currency created by the Bank of England. The claim is being made that RSCoin is a panacea that will solve all the problems that have shadowed banks over the past decade. RSCoin
While RSCoin does show some incremental improvements to the transaction flow currently in use in the conventional banking industry, it lacks many of the benefits offered to the public by a genuine, independent digital currency. However, this is not what is being […]
