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This Whole Bitcoin Thing Could Be Big, Says Bank of America
Nerval's Lobster writes "Bank of America has issued a research report suggesting that the crypto-currency Bitcoin could become 'a major means of payment for e-commerce' on its way to emerging as 'a serious competitor to traditional money transfer providers.' The bank attaches a 'maximum market capitalization' of Bitcoin at roughly $1,300, based on its position as a 'major player in both e-commerce and money transfer' as well as 'a significant store of value with a reputation close to silver.' Bitcoin has come close to exceeding that theoretical ceiling in recent weeks, although its valuation dove today after the People's Bank of China decided to declare it a volatile 'currency' without real legal status; that financial institution is also concerned about its use in money laundering and black markets. Bank of America sees Bitcoins' advantages as low transaction costs, its finite supply (which will protect its value), and its increasing attractiveness as an alternative to 'traditional' cash. As with the People's Bank of China, however, the bank sees the currency's extreme volatility and lack of legal backing as a bad thing, and frowns at the possibility that regulators could step in and increase transaction costs. 'A 50 minute wait before payment receipt confirmation is received will prohibit wider use,' the report adds. 'This is less of an issue for two parties that know each other because they trust the other will not double spend, but when dealing with an anonymous counterparty this creates a high level of unhedgeable risk.' Without a 'central counterparty' to verify transactions and thus mitigate that risk, Bitcoin could fail to break into wider use."
“I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies but not the madness of people.” -Sir Isaac Newton after losing a fortune in the South Sea Company bubble.
I'm not going to argue that Bitcoin won't dip in value in the future, perhaps precipitously, but the fascinating thing about Bitcoin is that after that happens....it will still be there. They don't disappear, and other than signalling from other participants in the market, nothing will have changed about it.
Beanie babies fall apart. Penny stock companies go bankrupt. Tulip bulbs and all that eventually rot, burn, or get destroyed.
I don't think that persistent state is a trivial difference. Bitcoin will still be there, with a price history that will encourage speculators again. The Bitcoin network will be running on some networked computers on the planet for decades to come, no matter what. The net present value calculation for Bitcoin really does have to go out much much farther than almost any other object besides precious metals and gems.
There is no such thing as intrinsic value to begin with. People place value in things.
BofA's angle is probably the same as with your money. Charge you to hold it, charge you to transfer it, charge you to talk to a phone support rep about holding it or transferring it, and while holding it for you, gamble with it on the side.
How long does it take a check to clear or do an ACH transfer? Longer than 50 minutes? In reality, you don't have to wait 50 minutes to be reasonably certain a transaction will complete. You can see the transaction broadcasted to multiple peers within seconds. For small transactions, that's probably enough. Usually a transaction will make it into the blockchain in about 10 minutes. At that point, the only way to invalidate the transaction would be for a miner to fork the blockchain by computing an alternate longer chain. Since there are many competing miners, in practice this would be very difficult. After a few more blocks have been added to the chain, it would be virtually impossible to reverse the transaction. For very large transactions involving thousands or millions of dollars, it probably makes sense to wait 50 minutes for multiple confirmations, but for smaller transactions it's definitely overkill.
Bank of America is always looking for new ways to screw over their "customers", be it through fees, lying, or trying to steal their (paid off) houses through foreclosure (and blaming it on "computer error" when caught). They're probably drooling like hungry dogs over all the ways they can fleece people with Bitcoin...
I'm afraid that Bank of America is not the ONLY bank which screws their customers.
In fact, I have yet to find a bank which has failed to screw their customers.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
We should all like this Bitcoin *concept* even if we don't all like Bitcoin itself or the culture that has evolved around it (and the get-rich-quick Bitcoin fan-boys). But all the bashing of the Bitcoin concept is disappointing, because Bitcoin represents everything that us nerds reading slashdot should like: It's a mix of cryptography, freedom of speech, computing, networking, finance, economics, and even politics. Most of us here dig that stuff.
Get over the hype and take Bitcoin for what it really is: a fascinating experiment that has, so far, withstood the amazing barrage of publicity, hacking attempts, legal uncertainties, and remains valuable for reasons completely contrary to everyone that says it's worthless. It may become worthless one day, but consider the possibility that Bitcoin is disproving all your wildly oversimplified assumptions about what makes something valuable. It is completely different than anything else we know, and there's plenty of reasons to believe that it could succeed as much as it could fail. (and in many ways it has already succeeded as a proof-of-concept of the idea of decentralized currency)
Why does gold have value? Nothing is backing gold, and if it was for its material properties alone, its value would only be a fraction of $1,300/oz. Yet it maintains value because of its properties to behave as a transferable store of value: scarcity, fungibility, density, identifiability, etc. Bitcoin shares a lot of those qualities and adds some new ones: ease of transfer over the internet, negligible transfer fees, fungibility, scarcity, storage efficiency, near-anonymity and built-in escrow. I don't think it's any more ludicrous for Bitcoin to have value than it is for gold to have value. And in the end, when I want to sell WoW weapons, buy webserver space, or play a few games of poker online, why would I use credit cards or paypal, which all require me to remember log-in creditials, give away personal information to be [improperly] protected by a third-party and/or pay a bunch of fees. There's plenty of value in being able to pay people across the world, instantaneously, without sacrificing your privacy, and without paying any fees. Why is that not valuable?
When you want to bash Bitcoin by saying it has no intrinsic value, ask yourself this: "what other system of payment/transfers allows someone to move $10,000,000 worth of value, to or from anywhere in the world, 24/7, nearly instantaneously, without fees, can't be debased or printed, irreverible, and without anyone being able to freeze or seize it (without direct access to your wallet)?" Regardless of its downsides, that's pretty f***ing powerful. There's a reason it's "could be a big deal."
I can't put my finger on why, exactly, but the whole pushing a cashless society thing really makes me uneasy. Especially things like http://betterthancash.org/ , which is targeted at the poor and developing countries. I realize that much or even most of our current financial lives are carried out digitally, but when it comes down to it the only thing better than cold hard cash that can not be directly seized from you, subjected to computer or human errors, or denied to you during emergencies are things with intrinsic value (gold, silver and other items mankind puts real value into as a thing unto itself). When people like Bill Gates, Citi, BofA, the United Nations, Mastercard, and Visa are all on board the "physical money is bad" train, I don't trust it one fucking bit.