Outside Source
Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon called the original cryptocurrency an “interesting speculative asset.”
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Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon doesn’t view Bitcoin as a danger to the US dollar and sees its fundamentals as valuable for banks.
“I do not think Bitcoin is a threat to the US dollar,” Solomon said in a Jan. 22 interview with CNBC during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Solomon said that he is a “big believer” in the US dollar and called Bitcoin (BTC) an “interesting speculative asset.”
He added that Bitcoin’s “underlying technology” is a focus of significant research at Goldman Sachs to test it in ways that could “create less friction in the financial system.”
“It’s super important,” Solomon added. However, he said from a regulatory perspective, not much has changed regarding the limitations banks face in using Bitcoin.
“At the moment, from a regulatory perspective, we can’t own, we can’t principal, we can’t be involved with Bitcoin at all.”
“If the world changes, we can have a discussion about it,” he added.
Solomon’s argument echoes a similar sentiment to Lee Bratcher, president of industry advocacy group the Texas Blockchain Council.
Bratcher recently told Cointelegraph that overcollateralized, dollar-pegged stablecoins would likely extend US dollar dominance.
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“If we want to continue US hegemony, we need the dollar to remain the world’s reserve currency. For that to happen, we need stablecoins to proliferate because stablecoins are giving dollar access to people around the world,” Bratcher said.
The US Dollar Index (DXY) is at 108.310, up 0.14% over the past 30 days, according to TradingView data. Over the same period, Bitcoin is trading at $102,911, having risen by 7.89%.
It was only reported in November that Goldman Sachs is preparing to spin out its cryptocurrency platform to create a new company focused on creating and trading financial instruments on blockchain networks.
At the time, Mathew McDermott, Goldman’s global head of digital assets, said that the spinout will be completed in the next 12 to 18 months, pending regulatory approvals.
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This article first appeared at Cointelegraph.com News
