Big banks have changed their attitude and views toward cryptocurrencies in recent years, going from dismissive to cautiously interested. However, Wall Street still isn’t fully embracing digital currencies.
Cryptos are no longer condemned as a inexplicable alternative investment, and even central banks around the world are contemplating on issuing digital currencies. Bitcoin is trading at over $50,000 per token and Dogecoin, which literally started as a joke, is now one of the largest digital currencies.
Last month, crypto trading platform Coinbase had gone public with a valuation of nearly $100 billion. This should have been a wake-up call for big banks, much as Netscape’s 1995 IPO was a Sputnik moment for the tech industry.
One reason banks are hesitant: Cryptocurrencies are still in regulation limbo.
The US government, for example, can’t decide on the category they are in. As currencies they face very little or no regulation. But as securities, such as stocks and other investments, they would face a different level of scrutiny.
In December 2020, the US Securities and Exchange Commission filed a lawsuit against crypto platform Ripple and its leadership for the alleged illegal selling of unregistered securities — in nature of its cryptocurrency XRP — worth $1.3 billion.
The on-going case indicates XRP is a security and not a currency, because otherwise securities law wouldn’t apply. Ripple rejects that label.
Cases like that, paired with the huge regulatory uncertainty for other big cryptocurrencies, make it hard to get bank’s involvements, which are regulated to the bone.
“Undoubtedly, the Ripple action was an example of the regulatory dark cloud that could potentially hang over cryptos other than Bitcoin or Ether,” Ashley Ebersole, a partner at law firm Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner and former SEC attorney, told CNN Business.
Bitcoin and Ether, the cryptocurrency of Ethereum, are so large and decentralised at this point that no promotional efforts by individuals would make a difference to their trading, Ebersole added.
