The former head of the US Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, made some unsurprising -in regards to where he is coming from- observations about Bitcoin and blockchain.
“Bitcoin is an attempt to replace fiat currency and evade regulation and government intervention. I don’t think that’s going to be a success,” Bernanke said on Monday afternoon in Toronto.
While addressing a convention hosted by the blockchain firm Ripple in Canada this Monday, Bernanke called Bitcoin as a “mostly speculative venture” that “hasn’t shown itself to be a real transactional currency.”
He also dismissed the idea, espoused by some die-hard bitcoin advocates, that the digital currency could be a rival to traditional government-controlled money.
“Eventually governments will take any action they need to prevent [that],” he said.
Bernanke acknowledged that blockchain technology, which relies on different computers to create a tamper-proof ledger of transactions, holds considerable promise for global banking systems.
“The Fed, the Bank of England, and Japan are very supportive of these technologies because they’ll improve payment systems,” he said, adding blockchain will be especially useful in facilitating cross-border payments.
Meanwhile, despite the skepticism of bitcoin by Bernanke, Jamie Dimon and other prominent financial figures the price of Bitcoin broke new records last week and is up five-fold from the start of the year. It’s currently trading around $5,600.
An interesting observation is that these prominent figures rarely say anything about the fact that the whole planet is sitting on an 8 trillion dollars bubble in fiat financial markets, as many analysts point out.