Intercontinental Exchange’s chief executive said that Bitcoin has the possibility to become “digital gold” although it must be used more in everyday business.
ICE head, Jeffrey Sprecher says that he sees the use in transactions as the prerequisite to bitcoin becoming a long-term store of value.
Bitcoin Have The Possibility To Become Digital Gold
The company’s Bakkt subsidiary, which runs a bitcoin futures market, announced recently that it is developing an app for consumers to buy goods from merchants, beginning with Starbucks.
Sprecher added that a number of employees already see bitcoin as digital gold. He added:
“Because I’m old I think of [how] gold became a store of value because at one point it was a currency,” he said. “We had gold coins, it was in circulation, and over time because of the nature of its ability to spend, … it became a store of value and today, you know, in a crisis we all accept gold as a form of payment.”
Bitcoin might take the same path, Sprecher said, citing its development and mining capabilities. He added:
“We don’t think that that that whole space will be relevant and grow unless there are real use cases and we do … think that a use case is going to be the digital transfer of value through payments.”
But unlike bitcoin’s critics, Sprecher sees this as plausible. “It may well be that, rather than convert bitcoin to fiat currency and then use [that] fiat currency to buy goods and services, merchants and users will accept bitcoin directly,” he said.
ICE (which also owns the New York Stock Exchange) has about 50 individuals working on payments infrastructure for Bakkt. The company is targeting an early 2020 launch date for its consumer app.
Source: coindesk.com | Image: businessinsider.com