Bloomberg has just released a special report on Bitcoin. The report covers a wide spectrum of issues surrounding Bitcoin. If you have been involved in the space for some time you will not find anything ground breaking in the report. For those who haven’t taken the blue pill yet, the report adequately covers the many facets and problems of the industry. Given that Bloomberg is a NY based company, it can be excused the America centric bent of the report. There is no discussion of China’s dominate role in Bitcoin trading. The companies profiled are mostly US based ones.
Bitcoin introduced a lot of people to the idea of computerized money. Now the digital currency, which set off a minor frenzy when it broke into public consciousness in 2013, is trying to grow up.
Novelty has given way to the hard slog of starting and funding new companies, like brokerages and bitcoin storage sites, that can be boring and profitable. Utopian fantasies have subsided as consumers remain largely unconvinced of the value of swapping their cash for bitcoins, or using it to buy goods and services or for transferring money.
There are plenty of people in Silicon Valley, Wall Street and other tech or money hubs around the world working on it, but no definitive answers are in sight. With price swingsthat have shown that owning bitcoins isn’t a sure path to riches — the currency lost half its value over the course of 2014, a worse showing than the ruble — you have to believe in the brainpower invested in bitcoins if you want to believe that the reality will eventually match the rhetoric.
The reports from financial institutions regarding Bitcoin are coming hard and fast. The major positive of this report is it forces Bloomberg readers to learn more about this new and exciting industry. Bitcoin is still at the kids table, but the grownups are taking notice.