Huw van Steenis, senior advisor to Bank of England stated that bitcoin is not on his list of concerns. Here are the three things he criticized about it.
- Not a great unit of exchange
- They don't hold value
- They are slower
The first point is just laughable because anyone that knows what bitcoin is and if they're being intellectually honest would know that bitcoin can be divided in 100 million units and there are millions of bitcoin in circulation. Bitcoin can be made to represent any amount of value far better than fiat currency.
The argument that they don't hold value applies because it's price does fluctuate quite a bit. However the total supply is only worth ~63 billion dollars which, for a currency is orders of magnitude smaller than the dollar or euro so if money comes in or out it affects the price very drastically. As adoption increases the volatility will decrease so this is a problem bitcoin will face in it's early phase of adoption.
Lastly saying that bitcoin is slower than fiat money is a broad statement to make because it doesn't take into account what type of transactions are "slower". Retail or point of sale transactions like most people do with money is slower to be confirmed on the network but is propagated across the network within seconds. Problems in scaling are being addressed and solved with technology like Lightning network which can confirm transactions instantly. Which makes this another problem that bitcoin can overcome after it's early stages of development.
International transactions however are much slower if using fiat. For bitcoin it's all the same no matter where the 2 people performing the transaction. With fiat if it crosses country borders you could be looking at days or weeks for money to be received in an account which makes bitcoin much faster in that situation.
Huw van Steenis is a perfect example of someone in a position of authority that is also threatened by a disruptive technology such as bitcoin. He may either be intentionally misleading people that he says this to or could just be willfully ignorant of what bitcoin is.
Thank you for reading!