In a recent interview at the Economic Club of New York, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein indirectly called J.P. Morgan head Jamie Dimon arrogant due to his dismissive stance on Bitcoin. Similar views have been reiterated and continue to be upheld by Vlad Tenev, co-founder and CEO of Robinhood and Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey.
Robinhood entered the crypto market in February 2018, providing accessibility to 3 million plus users and Square recently received a BitLicense license from the New York Department of Financial Services. Hundreds of thousands of Square users will now be able to buy and sell Bitcoin on the app and both Robinhood and Square stand to make a lot of money from it.
On the flip side, we heard Kristo Kaarman, CEO of peer 2 peer money transfer company TransferWise state that the Egyptian Pound is more valuable than Bitcoin. Additionally, a report was released by the Swiss based Bank for International Settlements, with an entire chapter dedicated to cryptocurrency.
The report calls Bitcoin an environmental disaster and slams it for its lack of scalability. Quotes like “history is a graveyard of currencies” and “history proves that money can be fragile” can be found throughout, suggesting that Bitcoin is doomed to fail.
It is Interesting to note that TransferWise makes money from exchange fees of fiat currency and the Bank of International Settlements is owned by Central Banks – pillars of the current financial system.
There is always a motivation behind every statement and most often than not, that motivation is money. Cryptocurrency is shaping the conversation and capturing the attention of everyone and every institution across the globe. Some will be proponents, some will be staunchly opposed, but no matter what side of the fence they choose, in our view, cryptocurrency is here to stay.
Meanwhile, legendary crypto bull and venture capitalist Tim Draper is still calling his $250,000 price target by 2022. This a man who owns his own university and was an early investor in Hotmail, Skype and Tesla – he thinks Bitcoin will be bigger than his earlier investments combined.
Also, the US Supreme Court just this week referenced Bitcoin for the first time in a hearing, with Justice Stephen Brayer musing over the possibility of people being paid in Bitcoin in the future.
Cryptocurrency is indeed, beggining to permeate everything.