All signs seem to point that digital currency is changing the way we bank. One example: according to the Millennial Disruption Index, 68% of millennials say that in 5 years, the way we access our money will be totally different, 70% say the way we pay for things will be totally different and 33% believe they will not need a bank at all. Plenty of folks think Bitcoin will be the answer, but so far digital currencies have not gained the traction required to truly disrupt mainstream banks. IBM may be coming up with an answer to combine banking with digital currency technology.
Just last week Goldman Sachs published a report which concluded that “bitcoin likely can’t work as a currency, but … the ledger-based technology that underlies it could hold promise.” This week, Reuters reports that IBM is doing just that: adopting the bitcoin technology to create a digital cash and payment system for major currencies.
Like Bitcoin, IBM’s digital currency system would use a digital form of currency and the blockchain technology. The open ledger would be viewable by everyone using the system, and would use an agreed-upon process for entering transactions. However, unlike Bitcoin’s decentralized system, IBM is said to be in discussions with the U.S. Federal Reserve and other central banks which would control the digital currency system, bringing legitimacy and scalable infrastructure to the IBM digital currency system.