Products such as Facebook’s GlobalCoin will bring consumers and regulators alike in line, says Sonny Singh.
A senior executive at cryptocurrency payments processor BitPay told Bloomberg on May 29 that bitcoin (BTC) will only expand higher from its current price.
Speaking in an interview with Bloomberg TV, the company’s chief commercial officer, Sonny Singh, said it was business interest and endorsement of cryptocurrency that was fuelling the current market-wide bull run.
“You’re starting to see that these currencies have real use cases around the world, and it’s making people really excited now because they can see the light at the end of the tunnel for these use cases,” he told the network.
Singh was referring to upcoming crypto-based projects from corporations including Facebook and Fidelity Investments, as well as extant moves such as JPMorgan’s JPM Coin and telecoms provider AT&T now accepting bitcoin for payments using BitPay.
As more plans become reality, bitcoin can only stand to profit from the increased exposure and mainstream dominance, he noted. For regulators, a double standard which favors private cryptocurrency but outlaws decentralized ones is now impossible, Singh also said.
“How’s the regulator going to show that JPMorgan we like, but bitcoin and ethereum we don’t like?” he continued.
Singh stated:
“It’s going to be hard. They’re going to have to make a classification: ‘digital currencies — these are the rules around all digital currencies.’ And that’s what the industry’s waiting for — to have regulations that we can follow and adhere to to prove that everything is legal in an organized way.”
While JPM Coin in fact gained a critical reception from the industry when it launched earlier this year, Facebook has remained coy about its plans, with unconfirmed media reports hinting only that it would target payments from 2020 and possibly bear the name “GlobalCoin.”
A report this week, nonetheless, cautioned that circulation of such an in-house cryptocurrency could face various hurdles among the social network’s multibillion-strong user base.
