Quote from: coinableS on May 21, 2015, 12:24:56 AM

Quote from: gentlemand on May 20, 2015, 10:22:20 PM

An interesting detail from here

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-20/bank-regulator-lawsky-to-exit-with-new-york-6-billion-richer

Ben Lawsky stands down as New York's financial supernintendo

'The 45-year-old regulator plans to set up his own consulting firm in New York, advising financial institutions on matters related to technology, cybersecurity and virtual currency.'

Teensy conflict of interest there. He creates the problem and then charges for the solution.

Ok so we all get what he's doing to make money. However I think this is a very bullish development. He stepped down and is creating his own firm to handle regulation on digital currencies like bitcoin, meaning he knows bitcoin is here to stay and there is money to be made in the sector. Lawsky talked to higher-ups and big dirty bankers and likely knows what is coming down the pipe for bitcoin from a regulation and banking perspective. If he stepped down and decided to start a law firm that handled other financial regulations that did not include virtual currency, then that would have been a huge red flag of bad things to come for bitcoin.

Its not bullish for bitcoin - it is bullish for crypto adoption. Lawsky knows that the financial services industry will seek to create a replacement for the payments network , ideally (from their perspective) a quasi-walled garden which only authorised participants (banks and payments agents) can access - they can then use blockchain tech to deliver many of the cost saving benefits of bitcoin to themselves and some to the customer base. A closed loop blockchain is perfectly feasible for the financial sector to implement. It would be centralised to the effect that it would be operated only by one industry - but decentralised in that each firm would keep a copy of the ledger and there would be multiple copies. If each Financial Institution is regulated to be only able to operate a specific number of nodes and there are multiple (a hundred or so) operating institutions then the network would be protected against 51% attacks by law.