Although Bitcoin isn’t for everyone, to dismiss it completely and say that it has no future is rather arrogant, according to Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS).
“If you could go through that fiat currency where they say this is worth what it’s worth because I, the government, says it is, why couldn’t you have a consensus currency? And so it’s not for me, I don’t do it, I own no Bitcoin. Goldman Sachs as far as I know… has no Bitcoin, but if it does work out, I could give you the historical path why that could have happened,” he said during an interview.
Blankfein isn’t the only person on Wall Street with this view, as the Intercontinental Exchange recently joined Goldman Sachs in establishing a trading desk for its clients to work with Bitcoin.
Still, the going attitude in Wall Street continues to be one of suspicion or even outright disdain. Jamie Dimon—JP Morgan’s CEO—famously called Bitcoin out as a fraud. Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, the duo behind Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRKa), have famously derided bitcoin, with Buffett going as far as to say that the cryptocurrency market itself is “rat poison squared.”
Blankfein doesn’t believe that these kinds of dismissals are the right attitude towards digital coins.
“I’m not in this school of saying… because it’s uncomfortable with me, because it’s unfamiliar, this can’t happen, that’s too arrogant,” he said.
Despite crashing from its record high in December last year, Bitcoin has maintained a steady value over the past two months, while experiencing dips due to moderate market panics. Still, because Bitcoin’s market capitalization is so small compared to other fiat currencies, affecting its value is quite easy. Late last month, regulators in the United States began probing exchanges, looking for suspected activities that could result in manipulation of the currency’s price.
Although it’s unlikely that there’s a cabal of investors conspiring to swing Bitcoin’s price, it’s certainly possible to do so thanks to the smaller trading volumes that the currency experiences in comparison to the dollar or the Euro. This, of course, may change soon as demand for cryptocurrencies continues to increase.
This article appeared first on Cryptovest
