Bitcoin too strong for states?The recent arrival of institutional investors in the Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies market has not gone unnoticed. Neither in terms of rising prices, nor with the regulators of the planet. It's even the former CEO of the mega-bank Goldman Sachs who says it!
Lloyd Blankfein is the former CEO of the multinational bank Company Goldman Sachs, which he led from 2006 to 2018. In an interview with CNBC's Squawk Box, the businessman was asked about the sassy success of Bitcoin (BTC).
Given Lloyd Blankfein's highly skeptical liabilityregarding the king of cryptocurrencies, it is not surprising that he uses the conditional,but he now admits that Bitcoin "could work".
He goes even further by acknowledging that the famous cryptocurrency could give the various government agencies a hard time:
"If I were a regulator right now, I would be hyperventilating about the success of this project, and I would arm myself to better deal with it."
The former CEO of Goldman Sachs explains that a good currency is supposed to be a means of exchange and a reserve of value.
Despite the high volatility of BTC prices, he is willing to recognize - in part - this last quality of safe haven value to the invention of Satoshi Nakamoto:
"It's a reserve of value, but a reserve of value that can still see its price move by 10% in a day (...)."
The risk of losing your private key,or getting it stolen,also seems problematic. But the biggest problem for Lloyd Blankfein is that regulators are, with the growing success of Bitcoin, increasinglyannoyed by the pseudo-anonymous nature of transactions on this network. A very advanced regulatory framework thus seems inevitable.
"You don't know if we're giving money to the North Koreans, or to Al-Qaeda, or to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards ... [regulation] is conceivable, but it will undermine that freedom and lack of transparency that people value in the first place. So that's the whole conundrum that Bitcoin will have to face. »
It's already a big step that Lloyd Blankfein recognizes the current success of Bitcoin, so let's not ask him to be already more optimistic about his future! In any case, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs is right about one thing: from Janet Yellen to Christine Lagarde,through our national Bruno Le Maire,regulators think every day about what they will be able to do with Bitcoin and crypto-assets.
Dolar