–The most striking thing about Benjamin Lawsky’s speech today weren’t the sweeping amendments to the original BitLicense proposal — though those were truly significant and generally welcomed by the bitcoin community — but the context in which he framed his comments.

The New York Superintendent of Financial Services seemed to determined to put his stamp on the idea that digital currencies have a future, one that could, once the technology gets through its teething problems, force the legacy payments and banking systems to innovate in order to compete.