THERE is no end to the disagreements about the importance and usefulness of the upstart virtual currency Bitcoin.
There is, though, no disagreement that Bitcoin’s rise to a billion-dollar market has helped fuel a wide-ranging conversation on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley â€" and many places in between â€" about the nature of money and how it might be evolving.
There have been few big changes in the infrastructure of the world’s payment networks in decades. The basic elements of the credit card system have been around since the 1960s and the mechanisms for bank transfers have been pretty much the same since the 1970s. Cash, meanwhile, looks little different from the way it did in the 18th century.
Bitcoin is but an example of several recent technologies that are seeking to upend the way banks, regulators, merchants and consumers think about dealing in money. Creators of mobile wallets and digital tokens, such as Venmo and Square, are trying to provide faster, more seamless ways of paying bills. But few of these other new technologies are trying to change as many elements of the financial system as Bitcoin.
“The awareness of how we spend our money, and how it flows through the pipes, has totally been elevated as a result of Bitcoin,†said Mark Williams, a professor at Boston University who has been one of the harshest critics of the virtual currency system.
Perhaps the biggest challenge that virtual currencies present to the existing financial system is the speed and ease with which they can move across boundaries of all sorts. Benjamin M. Lawsky, New York State’s top financial regulator, who is scrutinizing the virtual currency sector, has complained in recent appearances about the time it takes for his bank to move money from his own account to pay off a credit card issued by the same bank. In the Bitcoin universe, by contrast, most transactions are confirmed and completed within 10 minutes.
The current financial plumbing is a particular concern for people in countries with less-developed financial institutions, and for immigrants trying to send money over international borders. While Western Union can charge a 10 percent fee to move money to Mexico or China, Bitcoin users can make transfers free if they know what they are doing.
“There is something very powerful there in terms of allowing these kinds of international transactions with a lot less frictions and lot less cost,†Mr. Lawsky said in a recent interview.
Frustration with fees of all sorts has helped drive the interest in virtual currencies. Credit cards, for instance, generally charge merchants 2 to 3 percent of every purchase.
Because Bitcoin is run by a decentralized network of computers, rather than a central company, there is essentially no charge to move money from one wallet to another. Start-ups like BitPay that handle the process for merchants currently charge around 1 percent. A Goldman Sachs analyst estimated in a March report that retailers could save $155 billion a year if they all moved to accepting only Bitcoin at current rates.
Credit card fees are a particular problem for companies looking to collect small online payments for goods and services that cost less than a dollar â€" the penny candy purchases of the Internet world. A number of video game companies, including Zynga and Big Fish, have recently decided to take virtual currencies because tiny payments can be made without most of the money going to fees.
Even with these advantages, though, virtual currencies have real obstacles to overcome before they become as commonplace as cash. The most frequently discussed shortcoming is their price volatility. If the price of a Bitcoin could fall 10 or even 20 percent in a day â€" as it has many times â€" why would a merchant want to take the risk of accepting it?
What’s more, the lower costs of Bitcoin transactions are at least partly a result of the fact that Bitcoin companies face fewer regulations. That is now changing as regulators like Mr. Lawsky look at creating rules for the industry. He held a hearing in January and is now accepting applications for licenses from Bitcoin exchanges. If government authorities do create more rules for these companies, the costs may go up. And if regulators do not move in, the Bitcoin network could remain vulnerable to the hackers and fraudsters who have scared so many consumers away.
But while certain types of security flaws have been a major drawback of Bitcoin, the security of the Bitcoin network has also been a major selling point. Recent revelations about the National Security Agency’s classified collection of digital data â€" and the theft of credit card numbers from retailers like Target â€" have given ammunition to privacy advocates who think that virtual currencies can provide a more secure and private way to move money.
Bitcoin transactions are recorded on a common ledger, which makes all transfers traceable. But people who want to keep their Bitcoin spending private are usually able to keep their virtual currency addresses secret.
Beyond the practical concerns that Bitcoin is taking on, the virtual currency is helping to fuel broad debates about the way the world’s central banks currently create and manage money.
Many Bitcoin advocates are fierce critics of the Federal Reserve’s efforts to help the economic recovery by injecting new money into the financial system, in what is known as quantitative easing. The anonymous creator of Bitcoin determined in the software that was released in 2009 that no more than 21 million coins would ever be created, hoping to stave off the inflation that has been a regular feature of the dollar.
So far, though, fears that the Fed’s recent policies would fuel inflation have not been borne out. In fact, many economists currently think the bigger threat to the economy is deflation.
This has not cooled the ardor of Bitcoin aficionados, who are convinced that the world needs to move away from centralized control of the monetary system. For those who are not fans, the presence of Bitcoin has, if nothing else, held a flashlight to the financial plumbing that used to be all but invisible.
