Visa’s Chief Executive Alfred Kelly expressed skepticism about the cryptocurrency bitcoin, reportedly saying it’s not money and that the payment company won’t get involved with it.
Citing comments the CEO made at a National Retail Federation (NRF) conference this week, CNBC reported news that Kelly said he doesn’t view bitcoin as a “payment system player” and that the company won’t process transactions that are made with cryptocurrencies.
“We will only process fiat currency-based transactions,” he said, referring to currencies that are issued by governments as legal money, such as the U.S. dollar. “My take is that bitcoin is much more today a commodity that somebody could invest in and, honestly, somewhat of a speculative commodity.”
Bank of America has also expressed concern about bitcoin, recently banning its employees from offering bitcoin futures from CME and CBOE world markets for brokerage accounts.
The comments on the part of Visa’s CEO come at a time when bitcoin is falling on tough times from a valuation perspective. Bitcoin dropped 14 percent on Tuesday, hitting its lowest point in a month and trading below $12,000 a unit, as concerns have increased that a regulatory crackdown is imminent in several nations worldwide.
South Korea, which has wavered on the issue, announced last week (via the Justice Ministry) that it would be banning bitcoin exchanges before announcing (via the Blue House) that it actually would not be banning bitcoin after all. The uncertainty jumped back into the picture this week when South Korea further “clarified” that the nation is not banning bitcoin now — but could ban cryptocurrency trading in the future. Specifically, Finance Minister Kim Dong-yeon had told a local radio station that the government would be coming up with a set of measures to clamp down on the “irrational” cryptocurrency investment craze.
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