Bitcoin Forum

it's funny how there seems to be a consensus among a lot of bitcoin supporters that there will be no banks or fi's involved in bitcoin. i wonder what this is based on, to me it is really just a kind of cash which isn't very comfortable to use when it comes to large or fast transactions. i believe that if bitcoin succeeds there will have to be banks accepting and trading with it. what do you think?

Emphasis added by me.


Consensus? I don't think that word means what you think it means.

Yes there certainly are many who hold that belief, but there are also many who believe (as you do) that there will be banks and other financial institutions that will transact in bitcoins.

Haha that's why i said consensus among a lot of people not among all. You're right it kind of defeats the purpose of using the word consensus but it's correctly used. Nevertheless do you also have something substantial to add?

The idea surrounding BTC is not to involve middlemen... So, no banks

Honestly, I think it is only a matter of time before Bitcoin banks spring up. I mean, does anyone really think that a financial institution would decline the the opportunity to make more money? However, the very nature of Bitcoin is different than physical currency therefore banks would not be able to operate quite the same as they do in the physical world. There is no "master controller" in the Bitcoin economy, it is completely open source so a bank would not be able to have nearly as much control over the currency as they do physically.

A bank for Bitcoin will pop up at one point or another, but whether or not it functions in the right way is a completely different  story!

The idea surrounding BTC is to create a digital currency that doesn't require a "Central Bank".  There are plenty of middlemen.  Your transactions don't go anywhere if the middlemen don't relay them.  They never get confirmed if a middleman doesn't add them to a block.

Financial institutions won't go away.  There will always be someone who feels a need to have someone else help them manage their money, and there will always be someone will to offer that assistance for profit.

I think that there will eventually be banks, however, one big hurdle is the lack of traditional S&L type activities with enough size to support a bank. A traditional bank in the real world takes money from depositors and loans that money to people in (hopefully) secured loans. A basic home mortgage or car mortgage is backed by a tangible asset that has a certain valuation floor (even if that floor is 50% of the current price).

The current lack of such types of loans (loans tend to be basically anonymous and secured only by reputation) makes it hard for a bank to scale without losing a lot of money to defaults.

It will happen, but someone needs to really think outside the traditional S&L box for it to happen.

I personally don't think it would be unrealistic for someone to make a bitcoin bank, I already seen the basics of one from a few different links on this site. One being a place that gives out bitcoin loans and gives interest to people who store bitcoins. I never see a real world bank taking part in accepting and selling bitcoins though. Because of the stock like nature of bitcoins.

Bitcoin cannot be influenced by any government 'by design', whereas banks are subject to a bunch or rules and regulations and can be affected by politicians. Decentralization is not what a typical man in power would want, so we'll probably never see Bitcoin going mainstream.

I think there are already banks in BC. I have seen people ask for loan.
So where a question is, someone will answer.

And what polices the rules in BC btw? Or is that a gray world?
There is much involved for some people/group.

Depends how you define banks

I defintely see "banks" forming in such that people will pay interest to people on deposits and then use those funds to lend money to other people.

Growth and innovation of the BTC market is inevitable. It will be interesting to watch it evolve.