Bitcoin has taken a bit of a dip in recent days. While the currency is stronger than where it was 24 hours ago, the asset is still short of its recent $40,000+ all-time high. However, there’s no denying that the world’s number one digital currency by market cap has surged like there’s no tomorrow, and according to Lloyd Blankfein – a former Goldman Sachs chief executive – the government could really try and get in the way of bitcoin’s growth should it continue to surge like this.
Lloyd Blankfein: We’re Likely to See Regulation Soon
As a former head of one of the world’s biggest financial companies, Blankfein knows a thing or two about monetary regulation, and he’s confident legislators will try and have a say in how and where bitcoin moves in the coming months. In a recent interview, he states:
If I were a regulator… I would be kind of hyperventilating at the success of [bitcoin] at this time, and I’d be arming myself to deal with it. You don’t know whether you’re paying the North Koreans or Al Qaeda or the Revolutionary Guard. The store of value element is a little bit tough.
Blankfein is echoing the words of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who in a recent statement, announced that she was potentially looking to curb bitcoin and crypto activity in the United States on account that it was allegedly tied to money laundering and other financial crimes – one of the oldest anti-bitcoin arguments around. She said:
I think many [cryptocurrencies] are used, at least in transactions sense, mainly for illicit financing and I think we really need to examine ways in which we can curtail their use and make sure that anti-money laundering doesn’t occur through those channels.
Blankfein believes that Yellen isn’t the only one who’s going after bitcoin right now. As the currency continues to grow, many will likely step in after feeling pressure from their peers. He comments:
At the end of the day, if [bitcoin] ever got big enough to be substantial and a real medium of exchange, how could the regulators so focused as they are on anti-money laundering [not step in]? Do we want that to work out well over the long term? [Bitcoin] cold be workable, but [regulations] will undermine the freedom and liberty and kind of lack of transparency that people like about it in the first place so that’s the conundrum that bitcoin will have to deal itself out.
Wall Street Is Looking at BTC
Some analysts are also confident that bitcoin has garnered the attention of Wall Street players considering how well it’s done. Kay Van Petersen – global macro strategist at Saxo Bank – recently said:
We entered a new bull market when bitcoin punched through the $20,000 high seen in 2017, sending a signal that institutional investors and big hedge funds are willing to wager that crypto is a real asset.