Jamie Dimon Shows Why Bitcoin Is Not The Future

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한 줄 결론: 비트코인은 미래 금융 인프라가 되기 어렵고, 암호화폐의 미래는 밝지만 그 혜택은 비트코인이 아닌 기관 전용 코인과 기술 기업에 돌아간다는 주장. 비트코인 가격 흐름: 2017년 12월 약 1만 9,870달러에서 2018년 12월 약 3,391달러로 하락, 이후 3,300~3,400달러대 횡보 후 2019년 2월 4,157달러까지 반등했다가 2월 23일 기준 약 3,800달러로 밀림. 가격 급등은 새로운 실사용 정보가 아닌 투기 때문이라고 주장. IBM 블록체인 부사장의 '비트코인 100만 달러 도달 가능' 발언은 전 세계 금융기관이 비트코인을 결제 수단으로 채택한다는 가정에 근거하므로 비현실적이라고 비판. 암호화폐 특허 문제: 누구도 암호화폐 일반 특허를 갖고 있지 않아 누구나 쉽게 코인을 만들 수 있고, 실제로 수백 개가 만들어졌으며 대부분 사기라고 주장. 대형 금융기관의 대응: JP모건이 내부 거래·국제 송금용 코인 JPM 코인을 도입해 SWIFT 의존을 줄이려 한다고 언급. 다른 은행들도 자체 코인을 실험 중이며, 은행이 사용과 가치를 통제할 수 있어 비트코인에는 불리하다고 평가. 소비자 채택 측면: 비트코인이 소비자 결제 코인으로 가장 유망하나, 극심한 변동성, 거래소 해킹 손실, 규제되지 않아 생기는 가격 조작 문제로 진전이 더딘 상태. 장기 전망: 각국 정부 보증 디지털화폐와 대형 은행 컨소시엄 코인이 등장할 가능성이 높고, 지폐는 사라지는 추세이며, 화폐 개념 자체가 20년 뒤 지금과 크게 달라질 것이라고 봄. AI 기반 이상거래 탐지 등 암호화폐 관리 기술 기업(예: IBM)이 큰 수혜를 볼 것이라고 전망. 발언자 평가: IBM 부사장의 100만 달러 발언은 근거가 약하다며 '바보 같은 말'로 치부.

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01. Jamie Dimon's shows why bitcoin is not a future. From December 17, 2017 to that same date in 2018, Bitcoin fell from $19,870 to $3,391 and became little more than a plaything for day traders. The price then hovered in the $3,300 to $3,400 range for about fifty days, until Bitcoin rose to $4,157 on February 23rd of this year. As of this writing, it had fallen back to about $3,800.

02. What caused this price spike? Did new market information come out that supported the increasing use of Bitcoin for legitimate consumer transactions? No. Did new market information come out that supported Bitcoin as the new financial backbone for large institutional transactions? No. In fact, just the opposite happened. Bitcoin was hit with another wave of speculation. A vice president of blockchain and digital currencies at IBM mused that someday Bitcoin might hit one million dollars. That statement rested on a lot of assumptions, not the least of which is that the world's financial institutions would adopt Bitcoin as their cryptocurrency of choice for settling transactions.

03. But here is the problem with that. Nobody holds an enforceable general patent on cryptocurrency. This means anybody who wants to create a cryptocurrency, which isn't particularly difficult, can do so. In fact, hundreds of cryptocurrencies have been created in the last few years, all but a few of which were nothing more than outright scams. Nothing prevents the world's largest financial institutions from creating their own cryptocurrencies to settle trades and keeping them completely within a non-public, closed system, so that they are not subject to the widespread market manipulation and rampant speculation that ruins Bitcoin's usefulness.

04. In fact, the world's largest financial institutions are doing exactly that. JPMorgan Chase has introduced its own cryptocurrency, called JPM Coin, to handle purely internal transactions within the company and international transactions, which substantially reduces JPM's use of the traditional SWIFT network. Other banks are either starting to use or experimenting with their own internal cryptocurrencies. The advantage of these proprietary cryptocurrencies is obvious: the bank itself can regulate their use and value. That is all very bad news for Bitcoin, since, as mentioned above, its success ultimately relies on adoption by the large financial institutions, and they are all going another way instead.

05. At best, Bitcoin has a chance to be the cryptocurrency of choice for consumer adoption, but it doesn't seem to be making much progress there either. The main reasons are its well-earned reputation for periods of horrendous volatility, multimillion-dollar hacker thefts due to the negligence of its exchanges and unregulated clearing houses, and its vulnerability to widespread price manipulation because nobody much regulates it. Much more likely, nations will start introducing their own government-backed and government-regulated cryptocurrencies to serve as electronic currencies. Paper money has been headed for extinction anyway, and large banks will form consortiums and do the same with their own proprietary cryptocurrencies that they can control.

06. All of this is to say that the future of cryptocurrency is bright, but not so much for Bitcoin. Indeed, the entire concept of currency will very likely look much different twenty years from now than it does today. The industry will also substantially benefit from the rise of artificial intelligence to keep track of cryptocurrency and spot anomalies in real time. Companies that provide the technology to manage cryptocurrency, such as IBM, are going to get very rich in the process, but that wealth is not going to come from coins. And as for that IBM vice president who mused that Bitcoin will someday be worth one million dollars per unit, somebody at Big Blue needs to tackle that guy before he says something silly again.