Former Goldman Sachs CEO and cryptocurrency critic, Lloyd Blankfein said that the industry is the most-in thing.
Five years after commenting on not being comfortable with cryptocurrencies this is what the ex Goldman Sachs exec has to say on the latest episode of CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin on “Squawk Box”
“Look, my view of it is evolving, I can’t predict the future, but I think it’s a big thing to be able to predict the present, like, ‘What is happening?’ And I look at the crypto, and it is happening.”
Cryptocurrency Is Happening
Blankfein said his view of cryptocurrencies has evolved after witnessing digital assets attracting trillions of dollars in value and a rapidly growing ecosystem. The exec clarified that by “happening” he means the entire cryptocurrency ecosystem has matured over the past year with investment banking behemoth, Goldman Sachs, offering clients ways to trade and custody crypto assets. The global investment bank has recently expanded into decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols allowing holders to lend out and earn a yield on their cryptocurrencies.
The statement comes at a time when the total market cap of cryptocurrencies fell below $2 trillion last week after reaching a high of $3.1 trillion in November. The former Goldman Sachs exec addressed a wider sell-off in equities markets, saying uncertainty over inflation led to bearishness in the market. Blankfein was noted saying that while crypto has lost a “lot of value’ it’s at a point where it’s trillions of dollars of value contributing to it and whole ecosystems are growing around it. He remarked,
“It’s lost a lot of value, but at a point where it’s trillions of dollars of value contributing to it and whole ecosystems are growing around it. Of course, we have the benefits of instantaneous transfer and reduction of credit risk and all the benefits of blockchain.”
Cryptocurrency – A Parallel Financial Universe
During his talk at The Economic Club of New York in 2018, Blankfein seemed to have an optimistic tone on Bitcoin. He had commented that even if he did not own any cryptocurrencies, its future cannot be ruled out. During the talk, he explained that if the world could move from gold to fiat currencies, where the worth of the currency is because it is backed by the government, then it is possible that a consensus currency could also exist.
Blankfein began by saying that he was grossly wrong when he said the technology was a fad when cellphones first came out. Blankfein concluded,
“So now they have cryptocurrency. And I always thought, I can’t say why it should work. But if it did work, I’d be able to explain in hindsight why it did.”
