BitBeat: New ECB Report Is Largely Dismissive of Bitcoin – MoneyBeat – WSJ
BitBeat: New ECB Report Is Largely Dismissive of Bitcoin – MoneyBeat – WSJThe report’s conclusion: bitcoin and other virtual currency schemesв or VCS, as the ECB prefers to describe this currency-technology combination still aren’t really big enough to matter to the eurozone economy right now. But if future iterations overcome some of the flaws, the report’s authors add, these inherently unstableв payment tools might pose challenges to monetary authorities and so warrant continued examination. Conceptually,в the report concluded, VCS could jeopardise financial stability. в But it added that they currently pose no such threat, given their limited connection to the real economy,. the low volumes traded and the lack of wide user acceptance. вAlthough it acknowledged that digital currency technology has some potential advantages for consumers and merchants, overall the report read like a fairly comprehensive dissing. The ECB dwelled more on the risks and limitations of digital currencies than anything else. Its choice of nomenclature emphasizing the virtualв nature of these units reflected the ECB’s prevailing view that they don’t actually constitute money or currencies in accordance with any economic or legal definition. Perhaps most striking was the narrow purview of the research, which avoided addressing much of the past year’s innovation in the digital currency sector. Although it contained geeky comparisons of proof of workв versus proof of stakeв mining software programs, the two main competing validating systems for digital currency computer networks, there was close to zero discussion of the many non-currency uses for blockchain technology now being developed. Article
WSJ- source
