Former FDIC Chair: Why we shouldn't ban bitcoin

The nearly 2000% run up in bitcoin’s (BTC-USD) price over the past year, followed by its recent precipitous drop, is stirring the usual calls to regulatory arms.

Watching a volatile asset bubble (and yes, anything up by 2000% in less than a year is a bubble) can be painful for regulators. They know it’s going to turn. They know people are going to lose a lot of money. But what should they do?

Some argue that bitcoin performs no socially useful function and thus should be banned. But value — like beauty — is in the eye of beholder. 

Since the beginning of commerce, humans have assigned value to things of no readily-apparent intrinsic worth. Particularly in the case of mediums of exchange, aka currency, we assign value simply because those with whom we transact do so as well. Whether it is the cowry shells of ancient India or the thin green pieces of paper many of us still carry in our wallets today, worth depends more on psychology than physical attributes.

‘More faith in technology than in government’

This is also true of fiat currency, even though backed by governments and their taxing power, and central banks and their money-printing power. When the public loses confidence in those institutions — as they did in the Weimar Republic in post-WWI Germany, or Southeast Asia in the late 1990s — value evaporates. Indeed, these days, the lack of reliance on central bank backing may add value in the eyes of bitcoin’s more passionate investors, who have more faith in technology than in their government.

The number of businesses and individuals recognizing bitcoin as a medium of exchange is of sufficient scale to belie attempts to label it as worthless. And the promise of bitcoin, eventual widespread acceptance that would allow direct, peer-to-peer transactions with anyone in the world, has a strong allure. Moreover, unlike fiat currency, its finite supply and purposeful constraints on the pace of “mining” make it attractive to many as a store of value, similar to gold.

To be sure, today’s market value would seem to far outstrip the intrinsic value of these uses. But this is hardly the first time markets have wildly over-priced assets. Netherlands didn’t ban tulips in the 1630s, nor did we ban tech stocks when they reached nosebleed levels in the early 2000s.

How government should respond to bitcoin

Instead of making its own value judgements about bitcoin, what government should do is first make sure our policies don’t feed the frenzy. Certainly, federally insured banking organizations should not be allowed to directly or indirectly support bitcoin speculation. Government should also take steps to help ensure that the bitcoin price— wherever the market assigns it — is reflective of investors making informed decisions, free of fraud and manipulation, and that trading is not facilitating illicit activity. Fortunately, regulators have already taken positive steps in those directions.

For instance, the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) has provided a regulatory framework in which bitcoin exchanges can operate. (I am an independent director of a blockchain development startup that also operates a bitcoin exchange regulated by the NYDFS.) This provides a vehicle for investors to trade on an exchange subject to bank-like supervision, including capital requirements, customer due diligence, and cyber-security oversight. 

In addition, though the Chicago Board Options Exchange and Chicago Mercantile Exchange were criticized for “legitimizing” bitcoin by launching bitcoin futures, in fact, they created additional regulated venues to take bitcoin exposure through futures trading. And while most bitcoin exchanges remain unregulated, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has pressed both Cboe and CME to institute information sharing with bitcoin exchanges which will help them and the CFTC monitor for market manipulation and fraud in the underlying bitcoin market — a capability that did not exist before.

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