Bitcoin regulatory update | Future Internet Lawyer

On 16th February The Times reported that a number of the world’s largest investment bankers are considering using Bitcoin technology to revolutionise the $700 trillion market in deriviative trading. This is seen as an indicator that the cryptocurrency has finally turned the corner as a potential global payment plaftorm, much to the consternation of many policiticians and bankers, who see Bitcoin as the ultimate disruptive financial instrument.√جª¬ø

Bitcoins for Derivative Trading

The Times 16th February 2015 reported that Barclays, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan have become interested in using the block chain system used by Bitcoin, designed to make it impossible to couterfeit coins, or use them for more than one transaction by maintaining a real time record of all transactions conducted using legitimate coins.

The scale of Bitcoin technology can only described as ‘mind boggling’.  Mining bitcoin relies on high powered computers searching for an encryption key, known as a hash. The market for ‘mining’ has grown exponentially growing  by a factor of 845 in the 12 months to June 2013 to 88,000 trillion ‘hashes’ per second . It then trebled in 2.5 months to 252 trillion hashes. The prediction is USA will produce ten petahashes, using a phenominal amount of electricity, requiring cooling and producing waste heat.√جª¬ø