Former Chief Scientist of Twitter Issues “The Case of Bitcoin”

IMCA publishes Abdur Chowdhury and Barry K. Mendelson‘s report “Virtual Currency and the Financial System: The Case of Bitcoin”

By Brian Cohen

5/3/2014

I have been sitting on this “story” for a few weeks and decided to just push it out on my blog already.

http://www.imca.org/sites/default/files/current-issues/IWM/IWM14MarApr_CaseOfBitcoin.pdf

IMCA or the “Investment Management Consultants Association” publishes the Investments & Wealth Monitor which included “The Case of Bitcoin.”

“Platinum Members” of IMCA trade group includes Fidelity, ING, Nationwide Financial, TD Ameritrade Institutional and Thorngburg Investment Management.

Co-author Abdur Chowdhury is the former Twitter Chief Scientist

The Case of Bitcoin began as Marquette University Working Paper

Basically the paper concludes for the vision of Bitcoin to take hold that U.S. bitcoin exchanges must have financial watchdogs, Institutional money such as pension funds have to buy in to stabilize the price and banks must allow Bitcoin to be exchanged for dollars.

Other notable working papers by Chowdhury include (WP 2014-01) Is Bitcoin the ‘Paris Hilton’ of the Currency World? Or Are the Early Investors onto Something That Will Make Them Rich?

The Trade Groups Are Coming, The Trade Groups are Coming…

Another financial trade group covering Bitcoin is the Association of Corporate Treasurers (ACT). In Peer Pressure, Lesley Meall writes:

“Money is about to change for ever,” says Mark Hale, head of payments and transactional banking at KPMG Management Consulting. In the same way that the dull thuds of clay tokens and tally sticks were slowly but surely replaced by clinking metal and rustling paper, these have slowly but surely been replaced by something significantly less tangible: digital currency — and the demise of cold, hard cash is now looming on the horizon.”

In their Cash Management Conference Report Sponsored by Barclays it was reported in “DATA MAKES THE WORLD GO ROUND” :

In the closing keynote address, Chris Skinner, director of European networking forum the Financial Services Club, argued that technology, social media and virtual currencies, such as Bitcoin, are changing the purpose of banks. “Banks are not there for banking; banks are there to manage your data,” he said. These days, it is data — not money — that makes the world go round, Skinner said, hence the popularity of virtual currencies such as Bitcoin. Describing Bitcoin as “a new form of value based around data exchange… …Skinner observed that capitalism had died and instead we have a “sharing economy based around conscience and community”

It was also reported in Banks exist to Manage Data not Money Says Industry Expert by Sally Percy.