Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have been a quintessentially millennial phenomenon, brashly bursting on to the scene last year, breaking away from their conservative printed parents, before fluctuating in value. Sputnik spoke about it with Dr PJ Radcliffe, Senior Lecturer in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, RMIT University.

Sputnik: Should cryptocurrencies be banned?

Dr PJ Radcliffe: In theory; it might be good to get rid of it because so many people have lost money and so many crimes are being committed with it.

Practically; it's going to be very hard to do, and I don't know if it's worth trying to ban it now. There's been much publicity that you could lose a lot of money with Bitcoin that people may remember for six months or more.

Dr PJ Radcliffe: The speculative boom has certainly burst. When things are going up in price, people get all excited and pay more and more, and I think that this kind of excitement is over and done with.

There are a couple of problems that people are beginning to realise; there's a war between Bitcoin and Bitcoin cash, that's quite a big conflict there. In fact, Bitcoin has said, if possible, that they'll try and do a fifty-one percent attack against Bitcoin cash.

If you control fifty-one percent of the mining, then you can re-write the blockchain to everybody's disadvantage, and Bitcoin has said they might do that, so that's a bit of a worry.

It's probably crashed good and proper, but people don't have long memories and in five or six years the same thing might happen again.

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Sputnik: Assuming any potential bugs were ironed out; could cryptocurrencies replace physical currency in the future?

Dr PJ Radcliffe: One of the problems with Bitcoin is that there's nothing really behind it in terms of value. With the US dollar, the Australian dollar, or the UK pound, there's a government sitting behind it with assets, but with Bitcoin there's nothing, so if people all of a sudden get scared and sell a lot, the price can go down, and because of that volatility, because there's no backing behind it, it doesn't make a lot of sense as a currency.

There's so many other ways of moving money, which are very cheap and legitimate. Really the only big advantage to Bitcoin is that governments can't see what you're doing, which is what the criminal element absolutely loves, so for money laundering it's ideal.

There are very few places or uses where you can say it's superior to existing financial products. Possibly one is international currency exchange, as there is quite a large fee between converting currencies, which I think is quite excessive.

That's the only case where Bitcoin might be useful. Apart from that, other mechanisms are cheaper, more reliable and faster as well.

The views expressed in this article are those of the speaker and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.

The views and opinions expressed in the article do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.