After the price fall of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies recently, and after the comment from Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase that bitcoin may be a “fraud” and that he will “fire anyone at the company who trades it”, the CEO of Goldman Sachs may be feeling different about what bitcoin is and how it can affect his company.
Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, tweeted on his Twitter account the following message:
“Still Thinking About Bitcoin, Not Endorsing or Rejecting. Know that folks were skeptical when paper money displaced gold”.
As of current, Goldman Sachs is considering a trading operation related to blockchain and bitcoin, but there are many uncertainties ahead. First, it is no doubt that client demand for such a product is constantly increasing, with many countries and governments releasing new types of domestic digital currencies or plans for the near future all connected to development of blockchain. One example is Japan, which announced the eventual launch of the J-coin.
In this statement, Blankfein is using the word “displaced” and compares the “competition” between paper money and gold, and the eventual winner – fiat money, as we know them today. The question of whether bitcoin and digital currencies can replace paper money is still undecided. However, according to Autonomous Next, around 70 hedge funds are now investing in cryptocurrencies.
The huge scale and the projections about bitcoin and blockchain overall are skyrocketing, even with small “bumps” on the way, just when China announced its ban on domestic exchanges trading bitcoin.
In the competitive financial world today, especially the trading business, where motivation may be slowing, the excitement of trading and investing in digital currencies is perhaps the “FOMO” or “fear of missing out” for many companies and banks.
If Goldman Sachs decides to take the plunge and launch a cryptocurrency business line this can significantly boost investors’ trust around the globe that bitcoin and the technology behind it “blockchain” is actually not a “fraud”, but a powerful tool for decentralization, innovation and economic boom.