Goldman Asks The Big Question: Can Bitcoin Succeed As Money?

On Tuesday, the world learned that while Goldman may need cryptocurrencies, cryptocurrencies don't need Goldman. And no, that's not because cryptocurrencies don't need the support of blue chip Wall Street banks. Rather, it's because someone (and by "someone" we mean Mike Novogratz) is hard at work building "the Goldman Sachs of crypto."   So by the time Lloyd Blankfein's Goldman gets around to launching that crypto trading desk they're reportedly scrambling to get off the ground, Mike

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11 thoughts on “Goldman Asks The Big Question: Can Bitcoin Succeed As Money?

  1. You guys are missing the forest for the trees, or is it the other way around? This is beyond your control. You can’t control everything. Who understands why you would even want to. You’ve done a pretty deplorable job thus far. You’ve left things generally worse than when you got them and very much on course for a bad 3rd act. Its not gonna be your choice. These pieces make it clear you don’t even have the right lense for this. Legacy everything, but especially ‘money’, is cooked because it won’t align with millennial values. Get over it and get into it or you’re gonna be under it.

  2. Oh Heisy, we millennials aren’t buying Bitcoin because it’s needed now. No shit it’s not needed now. No, we’re buying it because your generation continues to screw us with increased debt-to-GDP/deficit spending, so we think it’s going to be needed pretty darn soon. Potentially even within my lifetime (and I’m old, at 33, or at least I feel old). Look at how the PIGS fared when debt reached a tipping point. Oh, but we have a recourse that Spain, Italy and Greece didn’t have? Wait, we can print money? Well, there you have it Heisy, absent some miracle sorcerer of sheer political will, that’s what’s coming: helicopter money, high inflation, currency instability, etc.

    Any questions?

  3. Actually, what millenials don’t get is:

    1. The value of critical thinking skills which they are somehow self-deprived of – in spite of more educational opportunities than any generation in history and access to information and data that no previous generation ever had. All provided to them by those lazy good for nothing boomers and the generations contributing to advancing computer technologies before them.

    2. Due to their general broad lack of critical thinking skills (I speak from too many of their graduate research papers), millenials can’t grasp that it isn’t the digital crptographic or blockchain technologies that the real world has a problem with – its the “private” part of current cryptocurrencies that are the problem. As an example, after more than 5,000 years of monetary history and development – and 1,000s of private currencies – not one survives today – whether made out gold or silver or paper. Even bearer bonds have fallen by the way side in recent years. Since mid-December – looking at GBTC and NYXBT Index and following news of the various national treasuries moving against private cryptocurrencies – current private digital currencies are already following the historic path of all private currencies – digital, encrypted in blockchain, or not.

    3. Extending the lack of critical millennial insights – they also don’t get that most informed people regardless of age – don’t believe that cryptocurrencies are going away. Only the private ones. The “powers that be” see the advantages of cryptocurrencies and block chain technology in a far more utilitarian light than millenials and will surely incorporate them in their own national cryptocurrencies and avoid the liabilities of the private forms of cryptocurrencies.

    National cryptocurrencies and a wide variety of blockchain applications will continue to develop as new revolutionary products and tools to improve transactional security and just fine even without private cryptocurrencies. Private cryptocurrencies on the other hand – will end up in the same dust bins of history as Green Stamps (which actually had far greater commercial merchandise transaction usage than BitCoin.

    Millenials will eventually mature, move out the shelter of their parents homes, move past the limited quality and circular informational resources of their social media accounts and gain broader understandings of economics, monetary and other realities.

    One piece of advice though, you had better get a move on it.

    1. 100% correct. I believe the main attraction for millennials is that they believe that it belongs to their generation and they can make a lot of money without much effort. The millennial “disruptive” technologies are no more than existing paradigms using new technology, in much the same way that “ride sharing” is just a taxi service using an app instead of telephone or raising a hand on the sidewalk.

    2. Oh god i lost so many brain cells reading this, this is why i think cryptocurrencies should be called cryptocommodities instead. Maybe then boomers would get it.

      In the future, “currencies” like ether,waltonchain,wabi will be looked upon as commodities. If you want to render an movie, it will be cheaper to do it on the golem network than to do it on a server farm, which means you need to use GNT tokens.

      If you want to protect your product against counterfeiting, you might need some wabi tokens in order to manage your supply chain properly.

      If you want to measure the grab rate for the clothes you’re selling, waltonchain tokens might come in handy.

      MOST people who know how the tech works are not thinking its gonna replace fiat. Your comment just reads like the typical millenials killed this,millenials killed that article from mainstream media.

      1. Indeed, you do appear to have lost some brain cells and exhibit those critical thinking deficits I pointed out above. Everything you speak of can be accomplished with blockchain based public/national cryptocurrencies whose value will be predictable, mediated to economic basics such as GDP and especially in the short term – so settlement values are predictable and therefore projectable for accurate accounting needs. Then you won’t have companies like NewEgg who says they take BitCoin backing out of BitCoin transactions because the value of the transaction changes too much during the settlement between NewEgg and their drop ship associates.

        Why would you complicate your business with an infinite variety of tokens that compete against each other, have no legal recourse, and no verifiable value other than uninformed public perspective? It’s not only economically self-defeating, its as ludicrous as comic book (pardon me “graphic novels'”) super powered, super heroes. Not only is it fantasy, it’s economically self-annihilating.

        1. “Why would you complicate your business with an infinite variety of tokens that compete against each other…”

          Errrr… Because businesses already do that?

  4. Old man shakes fist at cloud… I wonder why the central bank’s best friend doesn’t like digital disruption in the central banks business? So long as there are people fighting against better solutions, there are opportunities for the rest of us.

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