Chief Economist of the Bank of England Says Bitcoin May Replace Cash

By Rishma Banerjee

The chief economist of the Bank of England,  Andrew G. Haldane, mentioned in a Reddit post that Bitcoin has the potential to replace cash in a few years. Haldane made his opinions known while he was speaking to a group of students. It was when one student asked what he thought of cryptocurrencies that Haldane elaborated on how he believes Bitcoin would one day replace cash. While it won’t happen tomorrow, he was open to the idea 20 or 30 years down the line. The post reads,

“He [Haldane] said it [Bitcoin] could replace cash, he even joked about us likely having Bitcoin in our wallets… He said he didn’t think it’d replace cash tomorrow, but he was quite open to the idea 20 or 30 years down the line. He was also quite familiar with cryptocurrencies and joked that there were now thousands of them.”

These comments are however quite contradictory to what he had to say about cryptocurrencies, this time last year. He had then warned the public against investing in digital assets and elaborated in detail the dangers associated with it. He also had said that Bitcoin posed no threat to the current banking system. He had even stated that Bitcoin wasn’t scalable and didn’t even constitute 1% of global wealth. However, to be fair, he had made these comments when bitcoin was going to one of its worst bearish markets, where its price fell by almost 70%.

BTC’s recent bull run has led to many sceptics reevaluating their outlook on Bitcoin and the larger cryptocurrency market. At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading at $7,348.79, up 2.18% over the last 24 hours.

Rishma Banerjee

Rishma is currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in International Relations and has a special place in her life for sifting through all sorts of random trivia, thank you very much.