New research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago sees a complicated road to broader acceptance of the privately created digital currency known as bitcoin.

In a report released Thursday, Chicago Fed senior researcher Francois Velde didn’t immediately dismiss the newfangled currency, which unlike the vast majority of the world’s other forms of money, doesn’t rely on a central bank or government to issue it.

In the currency’s favor, bitcoin “represents a remarkable conceptual and technical achievement, which may well be used by existing financial institutions, which could issue their own bitcoins, or even by governments themselves,” the economist wrote.

But things will have to change for bitcoin to achieve broader acceptance.