back to article Bank of England could mint own brand of Bitcoin

The Bank of England (BoE) has issued a piece of research suggesting, among other things, that it may not be a bad idea for it and other central banks to issue digital currencies. The “One Bank Research Agenda Discussion Paper” is the BoE's attempt to kick-start new banking thinking. The paper therefore considers five themes, …

  1. Robert Helpmann??
    Childcatcher

    HTTP What?

    ...the paper says the equivalent of HTTP for money will be needed...

    HTTPS I hope, or perhaps HTTP$.

    1. Roger Greenwood

      Re: HTTP What?

      £TTP ?

  2. Ole Juul

    control

    ". . . getting security right and “without compromising a central bank’s ability to control its currency”

    Their mindset is still focused on it being their money that people will be using.

    1. Moosh

      Re: control

      To be fair, would you really expect a financial institution to take it upon themselves to design their own downfall? At least this way they're furthering the evolution of digital currency in general. It might not be as it was originally envisioned, but it's a start.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: control

      It needs to be 'someones' money that is used, otherwise you end up with all the stupid crap that has dogged bitcoin.

      Without proper regulation it can never work, it's far too open for abuse and that has been proved over and over again.

      People who think Bitcoin has a long-term future in it's current form are idiots.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: control

        "People who think Bitcoin has a long-term future in it's current form are idiots."

        Depends how you look at it. As a currency its clearly a non starter due to the built in highly restricted supply and the massive fluctuations in value due to it not been pegged to anything other than the whim of its users. As an investment vehicle however ... well thats another matter. It may crash and burn as better tech comes along or someone finds a major flaw, OTOH bitcoins may become highly sought after in the future for a number of reasons.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: control

          The farther you get from gold, the farther you get in a hole.

        2. Trigonoceps occipitalis

          Re: control

          " ... OTOH bitcoins may become highly sought after in the future for a number of reasons."

          Quick, fetch an inumismatist.

    3. Gordon 10
      Stop

      Re: control

      From a certain perspective it is their money, they are certainly the custodians of the particular symbol that acts as a proxy for money today. Whilst money is the rewards of our production, without a centrally supported, underwritten currency you end up with barter or bitcoin, neither of which have much to recommend them atm.

      They done necessarilty own the "value" it represents, but they certainly have a role to play in its dissemination and up take.

  3. SecretSonOfHG

    Britcoin?

    Consider the name registered

  4. Graham Marsden
    Coat

    One Bank Research Agenda Discussion

    Or "O Brad" for short...

    ... J.A.N.E.T I love you so!

  5. squigbobble

    Instead of the usual borderline/actual fraud...

    ...perped by the financial institutions we'll have them locked in an ASIC arms race trying to do a 51% attack.

  6. BobRocket

    Curate's Egg

    They get this bit right

    “the distributed ledger technology that their payment systems rely on may have considerable promise.”

    and then they say this

    'The paper also ponders what peer-to-peer lending means for banks, given that it takes away their role as an aggregator of deposits and lender of collected funds.'

    Have the authors never read this ?

    http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/quarterlybulletin/2014/qb14q1prereleasemoneycreation.pdf

    Bitcoin is just a use case that demonstrates the Blockchain.

    The Blockchain is where it's at (and it doesn't have to be finance, it could track beef from calf to plate)

  7. Mark 85

    History repeating itself

    I guess that whoever came up this brilliant idea didn't have history in school, flunked it, or is an idiot. Once upon a time here in the States, banks did issue their own currency. It ended up in disaster for many people with the only saving grace is that the bank usually but not always had the specie reserves in the vault. If the vault got robbed, the currency was worthless. So the BOE wants to do this again? Without something to back it up other than some bits on a disk?

    1. fearnothing

      Re: History repeating itself

      Do tell, exactly what is it other than information and authority that currently backs the pound? Or the dollar? Or the euro? It certainly isn't gold in a vault. We haven't used that system for nearly 40 years.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    BitCoin is great, however

    Personally I think BitCoin is a great idea, however ....

    i) Are all the global banks controlled by an unnamed super power? Trying to pull this power away from an organisation who has had it since the beginning is going to be a very difficult battle. </conspiracy>

    ii) So the currency we are using, is created and transferred digitally, as well as using standard notes/coins. Any bank is not able to show the amount of money it keeps in terms of physical money. Are we already on our way to Digital Currency?

    That's all we need is a few major banks to create a "standard" and off we go!

  9. Claptrap314 Silver badge

    Looks like a tipping point has been reached

    This really, really looks like a tipping point to me. From now on, if anyone want to poo-poo digital currencies, they get referred to this paper.

    Here's where it gets fun, however. Suppose that following another IMF-triggered meltdown somewhere, a bunch of the not-quite-second-tier countries negotiated a distributed common currency. Yes, the governments would give up the ability to control the money, but they would potentially gain immeasurable inflows of money (and even people). Enough to tell the big boys to go **** themselves.

    That would be interesting times.

    1. CarbonLifeForm

      Re: Looks like a tipping point has been reached

      Does anything stop them from doing so now?

      Seems to me the problem is psychological and political, hence unchanged by the introduction of bitcoin to the mix. Am I wrong?

      1. Brangdon

        Re: Looks like a tipping point has been reached

        It is the psychology and politics that Bitcoin changes.

        The strength and weakness of a fiat currency is that the bank can create more whenever it wants. The banks say this is a strength because it allows a country to inflate its way out of recession. It's a problem when different countries want to share a currency because they have to decide who has the power to create it. Whoever has the power has to be trusted not to abuse it by creating money for bad reasons. Virtually every fiat currency that ever existed has eventually been debased into worthlessness by its government in order to pay for a war.

        Bitcoin changes this by being distributed and decentralised. This means no-one has the power to issue more of it on a whim. New coins are created according to a fixed schedule. Hence there is no need to trust any central bank, and different countries sharing it don't need to trust each other not to debase it. They can just opt into it individually. They don't have to agree about policy.

  10. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    Just in case you missed where neopseudopower for command and control resides/hides

    "Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create money and control credit, and with a flick of a pen they will create enough to buy it back." … Sir Josiah Stamp, former President, Bank of England

    'A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don't need it.' .. Bob Hope

    "Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce." …. James A. Garfield

    "The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see." …. Ayn Rand

    "Banks lend by creating credit. They create the means of payment out of nothing." … Ralph M. Hawtrey, former Secretary of Treasury, England

    "Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason." …. Ayn Rand

    "Of all contrivances for cheating the laboring classes of mankind, none has been more effective than that which deludes them with paper money." – Daniel Webster

    "Whoever controls the media, controls the mind" …. Jim Morrison

    "The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled." – John Kenneth Galbraith

    Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws. …. Mayer Amschel Rothschild

    But all of that was for then and rule in the past whereas for now and the future and present in IT is everything somewhat completely different and exciting, and revolutionary and disruptive and destructive too in the creative process/alternative advanced alien intelligence reprogramming model.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Just in case you missed where neopseudopower for command and control resides/hides

      amanfrommars1

      ...simply brilliant - I love your quotes. They are so true.

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