Bitcoin Forum

This article caught my eye earlier: http://www.wired.com/2015/12/big-tech-joins-big-banks-to-create-alternative-to-bitcoins-blockchain/

Seems that big banks want in on the idea of the Blockchain, but are opting against Bitcoin.

Can Bitcoin and alternatives not co-exist?

Of course they can. Altcoins are existing proof of this.

Just found it interesting that the big banks and companies like IBM have learned a valuable lesson from Bitcoin and thought I'd share. :)

Of coarse Big banks want to get into this so they can make money on it.  There is no way they can get in now and make the millions to billions they are looking to make in a transaction like this, so they will try to start their own.  Ripoffs!

Wrong title!
 
What the big banks are creating is not a BTC alternative, nor is it against BTC at all. BTC is a cryptocurrency with an open public ledger. The big banks are creating a large distributed record book, but it won't be public (it's only for big banks), and it won't be associated with a cryptocurrency.

I like it. The big banks are doing their thing, and they don't mess around with BTC.

I agree, as long as the banks do their own thing, and are not interested in doing anything to Bitcoin, it is fine by me.

the thing I don't like about them building a public ledger is that it may make it so that neighbors compare bank accounts too much, and could lead to more robberies or other similar crime in the future.

I'm sure they could probably find a way around that, but it just seems a bit too good to be true, and would probably work fairly poorly in reality.

Big banks could use a large tamper proof distributed record book, but don't want to pay for the running costs of mining the bitcoin network. They have their R3 blockchain group which recruited bitcoin core developer Mike Hearn to make a system that's 100% under their control because they can't control bitcoin.

Indeed, they're just planning on using the blockchain internally as their own ledger to reduce costs and improve on efficiency. There might also be other applications.
I've seen similar articles a while back, isn't really something new.

Banks could use bitcoin technology by next year: study (http://www.cnbc.com/2015/11/11/banks-could-use-bitcoin-technology-by-next-year-study.html) (Nov 11, 2015)
Big banks consider using Bitcoin blockchain technology (http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-34278163) (Sep 17, 2015)
Why Banks Are Testing Bitcoin's Blockchain (Without Bitcoin) (http://www.americanbanker.com/news/bank-technology/why-banks-are-testing-bitcoins-blockchain-without-bitcoin-1074622-1.html) (June 1, 2015)

banks just want a better system so they can sack their 'fraud teams' 'internal investigation teams' 'security teams'

so that all they need to do is post a hard drive to each bank branch (node) and the bank manager plugs it in to hold more data as the bloat increases, which could do away with even 99% of the tech support team too

What's the Linux Foundation's role in this? 

I think big banks learn from the Bitcoin's success nowadays and they take the advantage to create their own crypto currency, but i don't think that's can really success , there is a lot of altcoins but only Bitcoin still in the top till now

banks want linux code, so probably getting lots of free code samples and idea's from that community

I think its more about the blockchain, they are seeing if they can use it in their business.  for example a lot of OTC contracts are traded, swaps, etc.  these are cleared by a clearinghouse and you have a lot of credit risk, counter party risk, etc.  But with the blockchain...it could change a lot of things for them.  I dont think they care about bitcoin.

They are interested in the technology that backs bitcoin, the blockchain. But depends on how the media spins this, may make coin prices rise again. :D

For sure they dont want Bitcoin they want to screw us instead because they cant with bitcoin hahaha xD

This is just going to be another altcoin that fails miserably. For one of these other coins to do well, it needs to offer more than what bitcoin can offer. Bitcoin has covered pretty much everything, so these coins have like no chance.

This is why I can never trust Mike and Gavin, they want to please banks and the stablishment, they have no vision on Bitcoin being a censorship resistant tool which was the original idea by Satoshi Nakamoto. I cant believe Greg Maxwell has apparently left the project because he got frustrated with them, he was one of the guys that had the right vision..

They are not looking to create another altcoin. They are just looking at the technology to facilitate settlements - in applications like stock exchanges and other financial products. They see the blockchain technology as a means to cut costs, and nothing more.  :)

your definition of altcoins is limited to the view of open source 'shitcoins' that people make as pump and dumps, without any infrastructure or purpose..

but if you use the term 'alternate blockchain with a unit of measure'..(which is technically an altcoin, but not refering to the shitcoins) you will start to see outside the box of all them shitcoin pump and dumps.

and you will start to see that another blockchain used correctly with its own infrustructure that solves an actual purpose, is useful for that purpose. bitcoin solves one purpose. but it doesnt solve everything..

imagine a land registry chain. where the purpose is not speculative value, is not to buy products. but were each microunit of measure is registered as an acre of land. where the address owner holds all his acres under his address and anyone can see who owns what acre of land.

selling land can be as easy as a transaction.

 

Wasn't IBM involved in Ethereum at one point?  So would we be seeing an Ethereum fork in the future?  Or are they starting from scratch?

anyway these crooks can get a piece of something they will always
come running lol. Would be interesting to see how a bank backed alt
coin does.

its not going to be a bank backed altcoin sold on crypto exchanges..

its going to be internal use only.. where customers just see a balance on their accounts.. in simple terms they are trying to get rig of sql style databases that greedy employee's fiddled with

As much as the banks and other financial institutions are in the run for an alternative to bitcoin, I can honestly say that it will not be easy to beat bitcoins from its game. This is a digital currency that has been deeply rooted in peoples mind and is growing day and night irrespective of the negative publicity it is getting.  What I know is that the banks are trying to come up with a currency that they will have control over now that they don't have it on bitcoins.

They simply like the fact, that they have the power to manipulate the flow of money. Even when they create their altcoin, people who know about bitcoin would chew through their idea pretty quickly and would still stick to bitcoin. It should be good news for us if they didn't create an alternative currency and would use blockchain just to move money around, since fiat isn't really that good in keeping its value.

Big banks will only create centralised systems which is not the same as the concept of "decentralised" and "trustless" system.

don't you think they're planing to acquire 51% of btc?

they are small banks now because they are approaching obsoleteness

that idea seems serious,and it can be really good technology based blockchain,they also know that bitcoin is very good for their project,i hope this match idea can't be really against bitcoin,because it will centralize and controled by big banks.

In Finland banks got they own qr-code systems (not bitcoin)  :-[

Unfortunately instead on focusing on bitcoin, creating the best cryptocurrency of them all people are once again divide their efforts for personal gain.
We are now seeing how financial institutions create ways to capitalize on blockchains technology, all of this because bitcoin is considered by 'law abiding citizens' shadowy and enigmatic, almost outlaw invention.

no way, they need to increase the demand very far to do it, many people ar enot willing to sell their btc at current price

don't do the mistake of thinking that they would just spend 15M bitcoin x $500, is at least x10 that, because the more you buy the more the demand will increase

This theme is treated several times in this forum and you can find t many threads or posts regarding it. Anyhow, you are totally wrong. A commercial bank (like the banks mentioned in the article or by you) have any right to create/stamp any kind of currency. So even every such bank will want to do this thing that you mention cannot do it because is against the law. The right to create money have only a Central Bank or an Authority which have this kind of duty but with another name (for example Federal Reserve).

As for the above article the banks want to implement the technology from which is created bitcoin and in which is based the build of blockchain. Named peer to peer (if you don't know it). This a disruptive technology which cut excessively the costs of every kind of technology which replace. The field of its application are unimaginable and depends only from the imagination of the human kind.

I thought they were after private sidechains? It's kinda not logical if they're gonna pursue a 'bitcoin alternative' IMO.

Well, it's easier for Finnish people to get used to bitcoin then...

Microsoft is involved with Ehtereum with its Azure system. I never heard about the involvement of IBM.

Yes altcoin and bitcoin can co-exist but what if those banks releases the blockchain based cryptocoin than we can't exactly call them as cryptocoin. They all will be centralized and their supply will be limited to total fiat they have in their bank. So i don't see any difference between the banks so called blockchain based coin and fiat we have now.

I don't know why people are afraid of this. One of the main reasons for which I'm personally using Bitcoin is because there is no centralized party and there are no corrupt banks involved. Obviously if they create a viable alternative, it is going to be under a fixed 'set of rules' that you have to follow (after which using it does not make much sense).

No anonymity/privacy, no decentralization. It's most likely going to be worse than the existing systems.

no i dont think they will create something like bitcoin or against bitcoin,maybe they just will create another crypto currency,and will not same as bitcoin,even that using and based blockchain technology.

I agree with this; the bottom line is that the Banks want Bitcoin under their control and can not have it like that, so they are pissed and are working on something similar to Bitcoin on the back end.  Don't be fooled, they are working on something which is why we need to encourage Bitcoin use now so that when they launch, they crash.

They definitely do plan to create something against bitcoin, otherwise they would use the already existing and working model that bitcoin represents.
After realizing that we are becoming a threat to them, they will try with rival crypto based operation, but they missed the whole point of it - decentralization, which i doubt they will implement in their model.

their model would be 'distributed'.. that way no single employee can tamper with the ledger, as the ledger sync's with thousands of nodes (one per bank branch)
but it would be internal distribution within the banking network.. not the open public.

but the purpose is not to rivel bitcoin. not to compete, not to win customers or make bitcoin obselete. its just to reduce internal errors, frauds or other issues.

But people will not use the coins created by the banks. It is difficult for the banks to agree on a single coin.

of course people will use the banks crypto, they will impose it as alternative to spend online. theres just no anonymity, its not decentralize and very much unlike bitcoin.
But the good thing is that people will use their coin to buy bitcoin :) Its like giving us more freedom to do this though and so trading with bitcoins/fiat will be easy.

not just big banks also govermants i heard Tunisia will use the blockchain technologie in their local mail service to create a payment service

I read somewhere that Blockchain technology will be used to run your house. If your water bill needs to be paid it will deduct it automatically from your account. I am not surprised the big banks are using the technology because they finally realized the credit card strip from the 70s should be revamped. I think its a great thing because like rotary phones banks will be obsolete.

so satoshi work helped big banks make more money. great.....

the story is fud in reguards to an alternate blockchain

its the Bitcoin blockchain they are looking at

and always will be, anything less will be incredibly

insecure and vunerable, they are not stupid,

Well, I would hope not.

The whole bitcoin / blockchain separation has befuddled me.

Without the incentive of mining (bitcoin rewards) increasing the size and security of the network how do you have any security in a "blockchain" only application.

Well, regardless them using the blockchain should only increase the velocity of tokens.

I think this is a good move in a way, BTC can coexist with this one too and this project might promote crypto like currencies as well therefore helping BTC too.

I think so too.
People will also use the banks alternative to Bitcoin.At least in the beginning before they realize that Bitcoin exist, if they hadn't know about that already.So this can be a bridge to bring more people after a while.
The same effect AOL, Compuserve and all the other one in 90s head to the open internet.
It is very hard to beat open, permissionless platforms, protocols where all the real great ideas, visionaries, new businesses will come from.

He most likely knew that would eventually happen. If he wanted to keep blockchain for himself he could easily patent his invention - but to do that he would have to disclose his identity.
In theory blockchain is the biggest invention of 21th century so far, Satoshi could be rich beyond belief (despite his huge bitcoin stash) but he opt to give blockchain to people for free.

It is sad  that his invention will be probably misused by big corporations - but I still like this course of action more than keeping blockchain for himself.

The problem with the banks having an alternative is that they are way bigger then the bitcoin economy.
Suppose the 10 biggest banks forced their blockchain onto their customers, Bitcoin would lose right away.

Banks can try to develop an alternative to Bitcoin, but they will always do it in a centralized manner. So, in that sense it will not be a real alternative to Bitcoin!

its the other way round, it will instead help bitcoin's economy.

If big banks start taking interests on the way Bitcoins is running through block chain, they will try to find out the alternatives that how they can get benefit of it too. They are the leaders from the past. So definatly they can think to make any alternatives of Bitcoins.

I don't think they should be doing that because Bitcoin is just fine on its own I am think.

If the coins created by the big banks have no upper limit of coins, they are useless. People will still use bitcoin.

I was thinking the other day about banks using a form of crypto currency, would they opt for using the same coin or would they all have different because if they all had different would they have different value aswell?

They can do whatever thay want but BTC was first and will stay at the top!

watch andreas antonopoulous on youtube talking about bubble boy, its great.......... ;D

Well yes and no.
They can do what they want, yes
But no bitcoin being the first is no guarantee bitcoin will 'make it.' Marketing is very important.

Banks have more power. Financially and politically, so they can implemetn their blockchain better, faster and cheaper.
This could be a bitcoin killer thing if they go along with it.

Facebook wasn't the first social networking system.
iPhone wasn't the first phone produced.
But they are the leaders today, aren't they?

It is quite difficult for all the banks to agree to a single coin, if so, they will will use multiple coins. Bitcoin will still be the universal coin.

thats true bank is powerfull..but how if when btc good more fucntional or advantages than that banks?everyone will be move to btc..no matter how strong the bank..if no customer the bank will not appear..

Banks always want to take a piece of cake. They can't believe that they can't control bitcoin payments.

an alternative for bitcoin is another altcoin, in this case a "bank" coin...
as others cases, I think it's only a speculation move to build a new currency, perfect for pump and dump ;)

And of course it has to be the Chinese again. They're everywhere and this one might send the price down.

The banks want a technology they can manipulate at will.... They also want a currency not linked to external risks { Developer problems / Miner

dominance / Pre-mined coins or Satoshi's stash } They also want a decentralized network, running privately { for security against hackers } and only

accessible to them. The fact that transfers of currency will be cheaper and more cost effective, will be a added bonus for the shareholders. They will not

compete with Bitcoin in the public scene... we already dominate that scene with a much stronger network and tested technology.

The only thing that is worrying me is that it might put btc against the wall...

Banks are clearly capable of saying that it's "exactly like btc, but has banks only can check the ledger it won't be used by terrorists" and that it will help laws pass against btc :/

But I don't think it will work for them and banks will ultimately fail because if they creat an alternative for Bitcoin then their will be clash between fiat note and banks BTC alternative I mean crypto coin created by bank if it happens

I do not think all the banks in the world can deal with single coin. If there is one, that will be bitcoin.

LOL, banks finally figure out they can use merkle trees to track transactions in a distributed database instead of using excel spreadsheets and antiquated databases written in Fortran. Very cute. To bad their database will be tracking currencies going through hyperinflation due to negative inflation rates.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EjpEqZt_AA&feature=youtu.be

They are a little late to ban the 100 dollar bill, when bitcoin is already a valid alternative for capital flight. In other words, even if banks create their own cryptocurrency(this isn't) I won't touch their shitcoins. They have already betrayed the trust of their clients and sold off our future.

Well, as much as the banks and other financial institutions are in the run for an alternative to bitcoin, I can honestly say that it will not be easy to beat bitcoins from its game. This is a digital currency that has been deeply rooted in peoples mind and is growing day and night irrespective of the negative publicity it is getting.  What I know is that the banks are trying to come up with a currency that they will have control over now that they don't have it on bitcoins...

They will try it of course but it will not get popular, the banks hate the bitcoin and the bank wants to have control but they will never get it from the bitcoin. They will lose for sure if they will make one it will fail of course. They only like the blockchain...

Cryptocurrency is getting bigger and more popular now than ever.

It's a no brainer if Banks want to make one aswell.

Actually yea. But on a bigger picture this is very good news to all of us. This to me sounds a big value hike for BTCs.