First, the article doesn't live up to the tagline - there is no long-term trend discussion, just Daily trend analysis.
Second, the point that banks are "studying Bitcoin" somehow casually implies that they'll come up with their own game-changing competitor/alternative is a bit of a stretch. I'm sure the movie studios and the RIAA/MPAA have "studied bittorrent" and wanted to compete, but so far haven't come up with any idea that could prevent the bleeding from their decades-old distribution systems being trumped by decentralized technologies.
The same with Bitcoin. Even if banks manage in some capacity to internalize the concept for some tokenized transfer system, it doesn't do anything about the external threat to their business of simply being a middle-man to transactions. If they can't be flexible enough to compete, and given the extremely low fee-structure of Bitcoin it seems highly unlikely, they'll have to make some rather hard and painful choices about the types of business they involve themselves in.
In short, Bitcoin is competition, it isn't going away, and banks can study it all they want - in the end all that matters is if they learn anything from it. Personally I doubt they'll have the foresight to adapt, and most likely will flounder in indecision until the segments of their business that relies on transferring money start to push into the red enough for them to contemplate drastic defensive measures.
And then banks become obselete. Because
People and campony's no longer need to exchange
And the same with tax supernational offshore exchanges
Will always be there.
Its like the old bbs system it stil exsist but is no longer the defacto
Standard.
