Bitcoin has ambitions for gold’s role

The writer is chairman of Fulcrum Asset Management

Investors in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have enjoyed a phenomenal run, but they are now worried that Janet Yellen’s arrival as US Treasury secretary may herald a new era of hostility from regulators and central banks towards what boosters call “libertarian” forms of digital money.

In her last press conference as chair of the Federal Reserve in 2017, Ms Yellen said bitcoin was a “highly speculative asset” and “not a stable store of value”. These dismissive remarks were echoed by many other public officials at the time. Since then, however, the market value of bitcoin has roughly doubled. Digital currencies are here to stay.

In the first crypto frenzy of 2017-18, comedian Jon Oliver described bitcoin as “everything you don’t understand about money combined with everything you don’t understand about computers”. The technology aspects, particularly the blockchain network of digital ledgers that are used to record transactions, have not really lived up to the initial hype, but they are beginning to make progress. The issuance of $20bn in “initial coin offerings” seemed to contain elements of a speculative bubble, but the funds raised are now being used to launch projects broadly similar to other IT ventures in Silicon Valley.

Jay Clayton’s recent departure from the chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission may result in less hostile regulatory scrutiny of these activities, especially if Gary Gensler, who teaches about digital currencies, replaces him.

However, resistance to digital currencies as payments and transfer vehicles is likely to remain. Partly because of high transaction costs, bitcoin is not widely used for payments, and its future role seems limited.

The outgoing Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin has been working on new regulations to increase transparency in bitcoin transfers and reduce the scope for money laundering. Ms Yellen, in conjunction with the Fed, is likely to adopt an even more orthodox approach, treating the payments system as a quintessential public good.

The Fed is collaborating with foreign counterparts in investigating the development of central bank digital currencies. It is almost certain that CBDCs will eventually be issued in the major jurisdictions, following China’s lead. However, they will be denominated in national currencies, not crypto.

Private competitors denominated in genuinely new currencies, such as bitcoin, will be heavily regulated or actively discouraged. Hybrid stablecoins, such as Facebook’s libra, that are pegged to a single currency or other real assets may be more welcomed by central banks, if they were directly transferable into traditional currencies. Furthermore, they may not be powered by blockchain. Each of the major central banks may develop its own distributed ledger technology.

That still leaves a role for crypto as an investment vehicle and store of value. Can bitcoin seriously…