A series of leaked slides from a Goldman Sachs' presentation which appears to seek to slam digital currencies and highlight their potential for misuse is being eviscerated by online digital currency enthusiasts.
While there is no recording of the presentation online, so the context of the leaked slides is hard to determine, their wording speaks volumes.
Goldman Sachs' primary criticism (perhaps other than the unspoken frustration that they don't control more of it), was that Bitcoin and its contemporaries are not even an asset class in the first place.
The presentation followed the above with a claim that the other most notable feature of cryptocurrency is as a "conduit for illegal activity, as shown below:
Notwithstanding that "Cryptocurrency" in the above slide could be replaced with "Cash", or almost any other bearer based financial instrument, the irony of the above claims was not lost a number of twitter users, including crypto notable Tyler Winklevoss, who tweeted:
This only scratches the surface of Goldman Sachs' historical violations. Violation Tracker, an unofficial database of historical fines corporate misconduct estimates that since 2000, Goldman Sachs' has paid over $13 billion in penalties for various violations, including investor protection failures, mortgage abuses, data submission deficiencies and more.
For good measure, the Goldman's presentation then including a slide comparing the price of Bitcoin against the Tulip Mania price bubble of the 1600s and the NASDAQ.
Regardless of the drama, we have no doubt that behind the scenes, digital currency businesses and traditional financial services entities will continue to become more integrated over time, and are already being integrated to operate traditional financial products.
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