“Bitcoin’s use of the blockchain technology is not very efficient,” said Prasad, who is the author of ’“The Future of Money: How the Digital Revolution is Transforming Currencies and Finance.”
The cryptocurrency “uses a validation mechanism for transactions that is environmentally destructive” and “doesn’t scale up very well,” he explained. Indeed, bitcoin’s carbon footprint is bigger than the whole of New Zealand.
He argued that blockchain technology will be “fundamentally transformative” in the way that finance is done and in the way we conduct our day-to-day transactions, like buying a house or buying a car.
“Given that bitcoin is not serving well as a medium of exchange, I don’t think it’s going to have any fundamental value other than whatever investor’s faith leads it to have,” Prasad said.
More generally, cryptocurrencies have “lit a fire under central banks to start thinking about issuing digital versions of their own currencies,” Prasad said.
