Earlier this week, Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) stated that she believes bitcoin and cryptocurrencies will eventually replace banks and existing financial systems by eliminating the necessity for intermediaries and third party service providers.As Lagarde emphasized, the vast majority of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and Ethereum are still struggling to solve their underlying scalability issues. Previously, in an interview with major South Korean financial news publication JoongAng, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin stated that it could take two to five years for public blockchain networks to scale with two-layer and on-chain scalability solutions.
But, once bitcoin scales to a capacity in which hundreds of transactions can be settled per second, Lagarde explained the decentralized nature of bitcoin could provide general consumers with a more efficient, robust, secure, and cost-efficient financial network as an alternative to the global banking infrastructure.
Furthermore, Lagarde noted that the mainstream adoption of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies would result in the decrease of power of central banks and leading financial institutions. Fiat currencies would no longer be of any value as central banks and local financial authorities would not be able to manipulate the value of assets.
