Bitcoin: Too Much Attention, Says Morgan Stanley Chief

Published on 16 November 2017 by Cryptovest Staff

James Gorman, Chairman and CEO of investment bank Morgan Stanley, believes Bitcoin is here to stay. But at the moment, the leading cryptocurrency is getting too much attention.

Bitcoin is not a safe investment, Gorman said in an interview for CNBC.

"Something that goes up 700 percent in a year — it's by definition speculative," he said. "So anybody who thinks they're buying something that it's a stable investment is deluding themselves," said Gorman.

So far, Bitcoin has gone through severe rounds of criticism bordering on misunderstanding, but the price rise has continued, rebounding from recent lows to continue moving above $7,000.

In a previous statement, Gorman was clear that he held Bitcoin for more than just a fad. But he remained worried that Bitcoin's close to anonymous transaction capability still drew in shady users:

"Does it support people who want to use currencies on anonymous basis for wrong purposes? Absolutely," said Gorman.

But Bitcoin has enough acceptance and users and it will not go away overnight, ascertains Gorman.

With the addition of Bitcoin to the popular Square payment app, this acceptance will only widen outside the still relatively small cryptocurrency community.

At the same time, Bitcoin is still facing a rather large backlog of transactions, a sign that mainstream usage may be problematic. For now, the number of pending transactions has halved from the weekend peak at around 50,000, but the network is far from clear and fees are still significant.

In the past days, Bitcoin has attracted even more attention as Bitcoin Cash seems to have made an opposing stance to the leading cryptocurrency. The issues have raised hard questions on the future of Bitcoin, its scaling, fees and usability.

In addition, the world of mainstream investments is hard at work trying to adopt the growth potential of Bitcoin with various derivative products and investment vehicles. The adoption of the technology itself, however, is for now beyond the scope of mainstream investors.