It’s not every day that you hear about a high-level official at the United States Federal Reserve speak of bitcoin. After all, they do have other things like the U.S. dollar to worry about.
But the 12th President of the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Narayana Kocherlakota expressed interest in the digital currency whilst speaking at a town hall that took place at North Dakota State University, reports Reuters.
Kocherlakota views the bitcoin technology as interesting, but doesn’t exactly feel the same way when it comes to its use as a currency. Mr. Kocherlakota reportedly dismissed the idea that bitcoin could ever replace the U.S. dollar.
The area of interest? Speedy payments between individuals.
“That’s where I think the interest of it is, myself, as opposed to a new currency that’s going to drive the U.S. dollar out of circulation,” he said.
In mid-November of last year, former Chairperson of the Federal Reserve Ban Bernanke said that bitcoin “may hold long-term promise“.
Days earlier, François R. Velde, who serves as an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago acknowledged that bitcoin was “remarkable” and a “technical achievement”.
Most recently, in April of this year, David Andolfatto (VP at the St. Louis Fed) called bitcoin “a stroke of genius“.
[textmarker color=”C24000”]Source[/textmarker] Reuters [textmarker color=”C24000″]Image[/textmarker] Wikimedia/Innotata
