Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein has acknowledged that Bitcoins could play a leading role in the way the world economy functions in the future. Although his company has, up to now anyway, adopted a somewhat ambivalent attitude to anything cryptocurrency-related, Blankfein has suggested that the use of such currencies may become more common in the future. Blankfein sees the use of Bitcoin as part of the flow of history, with currency having undergone several mutations since it first emerged, thousands of years ago. As the structure of the world economy has become so much more complex in recent years, with digital technology playing a more important role than ever, the use of cryptocurrencies seems inevitable, as far as Blankfein is concerned. "I read a lot of history, and I know that once upon a time, a coin was worth $5 if it had $5 worth of gold in it," Blankfein told business media giant Bloomberg. "Now we have paper that is just backed by fiat.""Maybe in the new world, something gets backed by consensus." Blankfein had tweeted in October that he was "still thinking" about Bitcoin, but he has also acknowledged that, although he may not "love" Bitcoins, they may well work out very well. There is still trepidation about Bitcoin in many conventional banking circles, however, with luminaries such as Credit Suisse Group AG CEO Tidjane Thiam insisting that the continuing growth of the cryptocurrency represents a bubble. Thiam described the speculation in Bitcoins as the “very definition of a bubble." The relationship of the banking giants with the new currency still seems mixed, then, with many notable figures still ambivalent at best about Bitcoin. Bitcoin has been rising in value since the beginning of 2017 and recently surpassed a price of $7,000 for the first time ever.