Euro Bank Santander Commissions Study On Bitcoin's Impact On Banking 50
First time accepted submitter Nikkos (544004) writes Digital currency news website HashReport broke the news Monday that European megabank Santander has commissioned a study to "Analyze the impact of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies on banks and devise a strategic course of action." The study is being facilitated as a challenge through Yegii, an 'Insight Network' founded by Trond Undheim. Undheim is also a Senior Lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management, as well as Managing Director at Tautec Consulting. The challenge was initiated by Julio Faura — Head of Corporate development for Banco Santander. According to Dr. Undheim, Faura was "looking for additional outside perspective onto the topic of Bitcoin. While acquiring consulting services from top tier consulting firms can be exciting, he thought that an outsider, multidisciplinary perspective, would be particularly helpful."
hm (Score:1)
Does this mean that cryptocurrencies are getting succesful?
Re:hm (Score:5, Insightful)
Revenue earner (Score:2)
For banks the virtual coins are but another form of financial vehicles but for government it represents new ways of landing them more $$$
Re: (Score:2)
The US already found a way to tax Bitcoins ... (Score:3)
Or the governments are trying to find ways to tax the transactions done in Bitcoin.
The US already found a way to tax Bitcoins, as an asset. They announced this earlier this year.
I believe that miners have to record income on the day they received coins from mining operations and that sellers have to record a gain/or loss at they time they sell/trade coins. This means that when you buy that cup of coffee you have to note the price difference between when you acquired the coins and when you bought the coffee, and report that gain/loss.
Re: (Score:2)
No. It just means that banks are looking for ways in which they can manipulate them.
Either that or the person that "commissioned" this study has personal interests (ie. family) in the company that's doing it.
Wall Street will speculate on anything ... (Score:2)
Does this mean that cryptocurrencies are getting succesful?
No. Wall Street will speculate on anything that can possibly be sold at a profit. Intrinsic value and low risk are not required, read up on the origins of the recent banking crisis.
All this means is that there is a short term potential for profit by trading in crypto. Any actual value or utility in crypto would be irrelevant to Wall Street.
Less profits for big banks (Score:5, Insightful)
With bitcoin being good for money laundering, the big banks will lose that source of revenue.
Re: (Score:1)
why would they lose anything? Why would bitcoin be any different from any other innovations and developments - any tool or idea can be used in support of freedom and liberty and more effectively againts them. Why would inter-pipes and all related stuff be any different? I mean looking at all the tools that we already had before bitcoin rushed to use our graphic cards all other inventions, processes etc have been more effectively used to crash upraisings than to support them. So how is bitcoin any different
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
With bitcoin being good for money laundering, the big banks will lose that source of revenue.
Money laundering was never hard in the first place. Disreputable banks just make it a tad more palatable to people who don't consider their behavior "wrong" and I doubt bitcoin changes that at all.
Re:Less profits for big banks (Score:4, Interesting)
These comments about bitcoin being good for money laundering are such BS. Do you even understand what money laundering is?
Note: I have worked in Financial IT and have had the AML (Anti-Money Laundering) training which was less impressive that it sounds. lol
The point of money laundering is to make an illegal income look legal. To take large amounts of a given currency received for an illegal act and to provide it a banking trail that makes the money look like it came from a legal source of income.
In most cases money laundering starts with large amounts of cash. Buying bitcoin does not magically make it look ligitement, and what exchange takes cash?
The truth is money laundering tends to be done by mixing the illegal money into the income of an all cash business like vending machines, massage parlours, small computer stores, etc. Then showing it as ligitement income on the books.
Re: (Score:3)
in any case, w/r/t money laundering, while technically correct on some points, your argument misses the larger purpose. money laundering is, at it's core, a means by which either illegal or simply non-tax-reported income ca
Re: (Score:2)
Fair enough, except for the situations where the initial bitcoins have been stolen - there are bitcoin services specifically to hide the bitcoin origin.
Re: (Score:3)
Ill reply to my own post to answer many of you who replied.
Changing cash to bitcoin and back to cash does nothing to launder the money. Move the money, sure, but not laundering it. Even moving it out of country does not launder the money and then the person receiving the money still has the task of getting it converted back to $$ without raising suspension.
To those that list localbitcoin or atm's, really for money laundering you would need LARGE amounts. We are talking number above 20k but to be honest it w
Re: (Score:3)
Sure.
Launder money for drug cartels, sanctioned states, and terrorists for years, ignore multiple "stop doing that" orders for regulators and when caught red handed you get a fined a few weeks profits and told you are too rich and powerful for the government to bother with the slam dunk criminal case.
Very severe!
Re: (Score:3)
With bitcoin being good for money laundering
lolwut?
On Banco Santander reports (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:On Banco Santander reports (Score:4, Interesting)
soon it was charges for this and that.. total PITA.
now i bank with my local credit union and i am MUCH happier
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
I'm a former A&L customer too, but I never really noticed any change at all. But maybe that's because I use them only for the current account service, no loans or credit cards or other tools of finance.
But I've got to contact them soon about a soon-to-mature savings bond I got years ago, so we shall see.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Not true. Santander began growing in 1999 after a merger with another two Spanish banks, Banco Central Hispanoamericano that were the product of another merger in 1991. Franco died in 1975 and there were dozens of banks and credit unions during his regime.
Re: (Score:1)
Everybody tell us their best ideas on how we should do our jobs and one of you might win $5000 whilst we save millions. Yay \o/
Awesome. I'm surprised they didn't post a question on Slashdot!
Verdict (Score:3)
"It's simple.
We kill the bitcoin."
I would be less concerned about BTC and more about cryptocurrencies in general. If people get used to that concept, using money as a totalitarian weapon and keeping the pretenses of democracy will be quite difficult.
Conclusions (Score:5, Informative)
"In order to continue to maintain control over the economy and manipulate financial markets, banks will probably have to get some laws passed that give us control over bitcoin."
Conclusions: give us control over bitcoin (Score:2)
BitCoin is a good challenger (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I see what you did there.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You forgot the sarcasm tags, but don't worry, everyone got the joke anyway. ; )
Just like Linux ... (Score:2)
Bitcoin has been forked many times over. There are probably as many Bitcoin derivatives as there as GNU/Linux distributions. So it's not exactly the Banks (Microsoft) vs. Bitcoin (Ubuntu?).
Carrying the analogy further, there's another cryptocurrency family that's like the BSD of the virtual currency world, CryptoNote (https://cryptonote.org/coins/). One interesting CryptoNote feature is teh use of multiple public addresses generated from the owner's wallet key, in contrast to Bitcoin, where each wallet cons
Human-readable translation: (Score:4, Insightful)
Why bother? (Score:2)
top tier consulting firms (Score:1)
> multidisciplinary perspective, would be particularly helpful.
Bad news for top tier consulting firms: Santander found out that yegii is much cheaper than top tier consulting firms while both are just using Google to create their studies.