How will international financiers respond to Bitcoin in the coming months or years? Five-stage response: denial ("Bitcoin won't work"), anger ("Bitcoin is for terrorists, criminals, and paedophiles"), bargaining ("We can do closed 'blockchains' and they will fix everything"), depression, and then acceptance when the financial system gets re-engineered for open borderless public ledgers.
Transcript
[AUDIENCE] I also like the analogy you gave, about the holes in the dam. Given that truth, the state and international financiers don't like money leaving their system, how will they respond in the coming months or years? It is hard to predict the future, but how do you address that? [ANDREAS] Well, I [predict] that they will [transition] through five stages of responses.
Stage one is denial. "Bitcoin can't work." "Bitcoin won't work." "Bitcoin isn't working." Except that it is working. Stage two is anger. "Bitcoin is for terrorists, criminals, and pedophiles." Just like what they said about the internet.
Until of course it isn't. Stage three is bargaining. "We can do blockchains." "Blockchains will fix everything." "We will take the open, borderless, transnational, innovative, and permissionless system... and make it closed, jurisdiction specific, permissioned." "We will take everything good out of it, and then we will just have a blockchain." Ta-da!
That is a bit like the horse and carriage association saying, "We have studied this newfangled automobile." "It seems kind of sketchy. We don't think it will work." "But we are now heavily invested in pneumatic tires! Pneumatic tires, the technology behind the automobile." "[That is what] we believe makes all the difference." "We present the new horse carriage with pneumatic tires." "That will preserve our investments in stables, veterinary doctors, and hay." [Applause] That is bargaining. After bargaining comes depression.
After depression comes acceptance. Acceptance is when the global financial system is re- engineered to work on open, borderless, public ledgers. And it will. There is no question in my mind about that.