GETTY Bitcoin LATEST: Bitcoin hype started with a list

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The explosive dismissal came in a discussion of bitcoin and blockchain technology in the UK during an ongoing HM Treasury Select Committee debate in Parliament. As Bitcoin continues to make headlines around for the world for rabid price volatility, another move towards the centre-ground of capital finance and continues unabated with news over the last fortnight that Goldman Sachs and The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) are planning to offer Bitcoin trading. But, during the session Martin Walker, director of the Centre for Evidence Based Management, told MPs during the session led by Conservative MP Nicky Morgan, bitcoin and blockchain are still “an area where some people can make lots of money, but there is very little obvious benefit to society”. Mr Walker argued much of the hype around the technology emerged from a “list” circulated on social media and copied from “consultancy paper to consultancy paper”. Talking to Express.co.uk, Mr Walker said the industry has arrived to a point where it is really a niche technology following the “excitement” of the recent “cryptocurrency and ICO”. He said: “A number of people have made a great deal of money. Money that is obtained at someone else’s expense as opposed to genuinely creating wealth.”

GETTY Bitcoin rose to over $19k in January but has since fallen to $8k

A number of people have made a great deal of money. Money that is obtained at someone else’s expense as opposed to genuinely creating wealth. Martin Walker, director of the Centre for Evidence Based Management

This money-making triggered a so-called ‘hype period’ that pushed crypto into the national limelight, and saw Bitcoin’s value multiply more than 13 times during 2017 following a mass rush of speculators putting cash into what looked like a simple get-rich-quick scheme. However, cryptos fell 50 percent in the first three months of 2018 and with the prices now at $8,289 bitcoin the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalisation, has dropped $11,494 since Jan. However, Mr Walker says that the seeds for the Bitcoin and blockchain boom were sowed in March 2014. He said: “A webpage started circulating on social media listing how Blockchain - Bitcoin version or otherwise - could solve a long list of problems. “No explanation of how or why it would be better.” This list included suggestions to “store nuclear launch codes on the blockchain” and although some of the claims were edited out, “the list ended up in the reports of serious consultancies, the media and governments”. The “fad” then developed for talking up bitcoin and blockchain at every finance conference or keynote address and Mr Walker says that senior figures in the banking world are guilty of believing in an idea “without checking whether there is good evidence it works.” He argues that blockchain was being applied as the potential solution regardless of whether or not it actually “fit the problem”. So how in 2018 should the UK government treat bitcoin and blockchain? Mr Walker says that blockchain as a family of technologies should be treated by UK lawmakers like any other technology “ie ‘Is it a good solution to the problem?’ as opposed to a belief system”. He adds that, in six months, we will see more slow progress on the enterprise side for real applications but expect people to question why some of those applications need to use Blockchain type features.