Thu Nov 12, 2015 3:18 pm

In answer to the counter question, imho would say if they fully embraced bitcoin and integrated it, then it would help short term (at a cost to the potential social benefits that bitcoin could bring), arguably it defeats the whole purpose a decentralized currency though (certainly as a force to disintermediate the banks).



Personally I think bitcoin could be of huge use to banks in a huge number of ways eg transactional efficiency/ record-keeping/ alternative asset class, but would prefer it if they keep their distance a bit longer until ownership is more widely spread (maybe dreaming at this point).



Intrigued to see what you think about the third question? (though will forgive you if you ignore it, as slightly 'damned if you, damned if you don't'!)



As someone with experience of dealing with all areas and senior management of a 'tier 1' bank - compliance and fincrime (or innovation depts) do not generally make decisions and can be overruled at any time, so make sure any agreements you have are in writing!

With regards to your "defeats the potential social benefits", I'm not entirely sure it would play out like that. If in parallel we would see the Bitcoin adoption that we anticipate to happen and regulation shapes up to be embracive, the logical route for banks would be to open up and interact with the wider Bitcoin economy. This could be accelerated by - at least the UK and I believe European - legislation moving towards open data ( https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/s ... sponse.pdf ).Ownership being more widely spread, yes ideally, but it's hard to dictate the timeline. The banks have woken up and it's full speed ahead.As for the third question, financial institutions come in different flavours. Some aggressive, some exploring and some taking the back seat. I would categorise most of them in the latter category. Primarily challenger banks and fintech companies have a different modus operandi. For those following an aggressive agenda it's of course profit-driven and they have different ways to approach their SWOT. It is smart to hedge bets. They should both embrace blockchain and bitcoin as a hedge against fiat / existing structures. And it also make sense to invest in companies that directly compete with and may disrupt them one day as well as form early alliances and cooperations (accelerators, challenges and the type of coop. we have done with Barclays). Banks in particular have historically been able to keep a moat of compliance around them where they were able to influence policy makers to maintain their oligarchy. Although fintech companies have been disrupting the banks to some extent, it has not been the threat they may face from blockchain/bitcoin which is fundamentally different; bottom-up movement, decentralised and - for the time being - resistant to compliance.