Can Bitcoin Be the Saving Grace for Ailing Banks?

[hatshepsut93]

A bill in Germany, having successfully passed through the Bundestag, the German federal parliament, is suggesting that traditional banks should buy, hold, sell and trade cryptocurrency. This could be a big step in helping struggling banks resurrect themselves.[/i]

Yeah, buying a volatile asset is sure a good way to save banks on the brink of insolvency! /s

First, the bill hasn't passed yet, so it's too early to celebrate. Next, most banks don't need to be saved and they can't be saved by Bitcoin. The goal of this bill is to just give banks access to another type of assets, maybe some banks will offer crypto custody services, or trading, or want to simply invest in it - there's many possibilities, and it's their choice what to do. Most banks will probably ignore it initially.

Don't create hype, it's never good to have unrealistic expectations.

[Pearls Before Swine]

A bill in Germany, having successfully passed through the Bundestag, the German federal parliament, is suggesting that traditional banks should buy, hold, sell and trade cryptocurrency.

That's all well and good, but what happens if those cryptocurrencies drop 50%, 80%, or 90% or even more while the gov't is holding them?  We all know that's a very real possibility, because those kinds of dramatic price movements have been common even with bitcoin.  I don't think it's a great idea for taxpayers to be funding speculation in crypto.

Banks might be ailing, but they'll survive.  The banking system has survived many shocks to it in the past, and some of them have been brutal.  I would question whether crypto will make it rather than if the banks will.  There is much less history in the former and less stability as well.

Yeah, buying a volatile asset is sure a good way to save banks on the brink of insolvency! /s

Well put and that's kind of what I was trying to say.  They might as well take taxpayer money and go to the casino with it and see how that works out for them.

[ntsdm1]

Blockchain technology will be the saving grace for struggling Banks.  The Banks quickly realized that Bitcoin was a disruptive force, so they

adapted to the threat by developing their own centralized Blockchain based technologies. The R3 Blockchain consortium are working on a enterprise

blockchain technology solution. They are building  distributed applications on top of Corda (known as CorDapps) for usage across industries such as

financial services, insurance, healthcare, trade finance, and digital assets. Source : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/R3_(company)  You will soon see

a host of Banking services using these technologies.  

And most likely the banks will succeed in this regard.After all, they actually have more opportunities.And let's just say, experts from the field of crypto-currencies may well become employees in the Bank.For me, it is absurd even to link cryptocurrency and banks, but you need to learn to look reality in the eye.Regulation of cryptocurrencies has already begun and governments, along with banks, will soon take control.

[TRONTON]

Banks have monetary policies that are supported by many things including bonds and taxes that can be more tightly regulated, they still have reserves to struggle in improving conditions, especially national banks that are supported by the government directly.

If they accept bitcoin without a strong design and are not fully stable, it will only be a time bomb and will be more difficult through the recovery process, and the biggest panic martyr will occur in their customers.

[RareFortune]

Crypto banks are on the rise, slowly but surely. Now that people are slowly transitioning to put their money in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies than in banks, it is clear that this is the future and no one can stop it. If these banks are still against it, they would be left behind.

The growing number of Bitcoin users day by day makes the bank think twice and to take action. They are doing their own research now on how will they benefit from adding Bitcoin in their current system and sooner or later they will realize that Bitcoin is not against them and just here to lend them a hand for the betterment of the financial industry.

[MFahad]

Bitcoin is just another currency. So in the sense that banks make profits from handling currency, they can and should be able to make a profit out of handling bitcoin.

The reason people initially thought bitcoin would make banks obsolete was because you could have your wallet on your computer, which meant you didn't need to store it in the bank. But the blockchain has become so huge that most people arn't able to have their wallets on their computers, they hold them online in services like Coinbase. And this is where the banks can step in and offer wallet services - for a fee.

Why would people pay a fee for a service which coinbase offer for free ? Also we do not need to store the whole blockchain database on our computers. We can store the bitcoins in desktop wallets like Electrum Bitcoin Wallet. It is way better and cheaper to store bitcoins in desktop / hardware wallets then to store them in online wallets or banks in future.