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Why Bitcoin’s demise could be good for Silicon Valley

It’s the end of Bitcoin as we know it, and I feel fine.

My apparent giddiness over this news is not about Bitcoin per se — although my RoseRyan colleagues had tracked its progress and discouraged CFOs from taking on the risk — I wouldn’t wish such big losses on anyone.

But it has created buzz in more ways than one. I don’t think I have had more e-mails and comments from my friends and colleagues in the last few years than I have over the past several weeks regarding the cryptocurrency. The heat was turned up with the recent announcement that Tokyo-based Mt. Gox, one of the largest Bitcoin exchanges, rapidly closed up shop amidst a potential loss of $473 million of its users’ money.

Now the buzz will shift toward the complete revolution happening in the payments business and its effect on Silicon Valley, and this is a change I’m excited about. PayPal, Square, Google, Apple and others are transforming the world of payments, by inserting themselves into a process that has been owned by the banks (full disclosure: I actively use PayPal). Gartner estimates that mobile payments alone will top $720 billion by the year 2017, up from $235 billion last year. The expansion of payment options will mean everyday Americans will hopefully no longer get so nickel-and-dimed on financial transactions.

In regard to the next “big thing” mantra of Silicon Valley, the payments business is already in full frenzy. It is your classic innovators dilemma: Venture capitalists are funding young, innovative startups; midsize players are adopting the changes; and banks — typically slow moving elephants — are running scared. Why? Those teeny-weeny payments add up. There were $15 trillion worth of retail transactions last year. The upside is huge not only because of transaction fees but also the ability to harvest large troves of consumer data. Security concerns will be an issue as players position themselves for the gold rush. This fast-moving train is a tough one for bureaucrats, who try to promote innovation but who must also put in place adequate consumer protections.

With Bitcoin, things did move too fast. The Bitcoin issue reminds me of Napster. Initially, Napster was a site to share music files and was frequented mostly by teenagers who were not willing (or couldn’t afford) to pay for digital music files. Napster caught a lot of heat for allowing a forum of users to access illegally obtained music, and it was subsequently shut down. A result of the Napster shutdown was that Apple came into the same space and built an incredible music delivery engine — iTunes on the iPod, then the iPhone and now the iPad — off the back of 25 billion–plus songs that have been downloaded since 2003.

How does the disruption to the music industry relate to Bitcoin? Stay with me here. Bitcoin’s ubiquitous network has allowed people throughout the world to anonymously transact commerce. It was envisioned to have tremendous ease of use, to be something as simple as email.  Although there are many differences with the PayPal network (and other networks), a key differentiator is that Bitcoin does not take a toll every time a payment is made. Once you have created a digital wallet, it is very simple for you to exchange money pretty much the same way that you would purchase something with cash.

So where is this leading? I expect there to be many issues that will continue to impact Bitcoin (lack of a governing owner, security concerns, and exchanges going out of business are among its many challenges). And I do expect innovative firms to emerge in this digital cryptocurrency space — and perhaps there will be multiple winners. Bitcoin “could, in the long run, give rise to one or several very robust currencies,” writes George Selgin, an economics professor at the University of Georgia in a paper on Bitcoin’s properties. “That’s how competition works generally, with winners and losers but with quality generally improving as the struggle goes on.”

And in an MIT Technology Review article, Tom Simonite notes that “even if interest in Bitcoin fades, it could still have a lasting legacy as an inspiration to better-designed forms of digital money.” It took Apple 10 years to get to 25 billion downloads — perhaps the next cryptocurrency will have 25 billion transactions in 5 years!

Chris Vane is a director at RoseRyan, where he leads the development of the finance and accounting firm’s cleantech and high tech practices. He can be reached at [email protected] or call him at 510.456.3056 x169.

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Bitcoins: should CFOs be willing to take the risk?

You are the CFO of a public company and your CEO suggests you invest in Bitcoins, as their value has gone up a lot over the past few weeks, and he thinks that will continue. He says it will make the bottom line on the income statement look stronger. What should you do?

You’ll first have to do a little explaining. Bitcoins are a very new and highly volatile virtual currency, and should be treated with caution, by both personal investors and companies that decide to invest in them or incorporate them into their payment systems. Here’s an example of their volatility: In early December 2013, Bitcoins were trading at $421 per coin, and just a month later, they were trading at well over $1,000 a coin. So if you had bought some in December, you would have looked like a hero in early January. Unfortunately, if you had bought some in November 2013, you would actually be showing a loss in January, as they were trading at $1,100 back then. You would have been looking really bad when the price dropped to $421 in December. But there’s more of an issue here than how you look.

Bitcoins are an unregulated currency in the U.S. at this time. If the U.S. ever decides to regulate them, expect the price to drop significantly when that regulation is announced. China’s decision to not allow conversion of Bitcoins into local Chinese currency back in December was one of the big reasons for the drop in their price. Will the U.S. decide to regulate? Hard to say, but Bitcoin is associated with money laundering, and that in itself may invite scrutiny of your company should you trade in them, and it may also be the driving force to regulation. In addition, as Bitcoins are not regulated, there is and will continue to be no protection to consumers who buy them and lose money on them, and of course they have no intrinsic value. No government wants its consumers to suffer losses, especially when it’s avoidable. My guess is that at some point soon there will be regulation.

In the meantime, some companies, such as Zynga, are starting to accept Bitcoins as a form of payment. However, most companies are still not having anything to do with them, because of the risk involved. I don’t know what Zynga or the other companies are doing with the Bitcoins when they get receipt of them, but I suspect they are converting the Bitcoins to established currencies as fast as they can, so they can minimize their risk. If they don’t convert, they are holding the Bitcoins as an investment. That raises a whole slew of issues, including whether they can even do it under their investment policy. Nearly all public companies have investment policies that restrict the type of investment they hold to, say, AAA-level investments. I am pretty sure Bitcoins fall outside that classification, so companies would be barred from holding them without changing their policy. It would be a brave board of directors that changed that policy given the downside risk.

So, back to the original question of what should you do? This is a classic case of risk assessment, and I personally suggest you proceed with a tremendous amount of caution. First, you should check your investment policy and see if it allows for such holdings. If it doesn’t, there will need to be a discussion at the board level about that policy and what the company is trying to achieve under its policy. If the policy doesn’t allow for investment and the board wants to invest in them, the board will need to adopt changes. Second, if you do decide to invest and the policy allows for it, consider the downside risk. If you are not willing as a company to stomach the downside, do not invest. If you and your company are tolerant of some risk, limit your investment to that level of risk.

You as the CFO are responsible for the financial actions of the company, and you will get all the attention, whether Bitcoins go sour or they actually soar. I remember a similar situation with mortgage-backed securities in the last decade. Back then, I was a CFO of a public company with $150 million in investments, and investors were screaming at me to buy them because they had great returns. Our returns were 4% whereas others had double-digit returns. I did not authorize buying them, as we had a very cautious investment policy and they were outside the scope, plus their nature just made me nervous and I was not going to recommend we change our policy. When their value crashed in 2008, there was a tremendous backlash on CFOs and companies that had held them. My 4% return suddenly looked very good, and my board was very happy with my actions. Unfortunately, many companies and CFOs paid the ultimate price. You don’t want to be the one in that situation.

So act with caution, and remember that it’s not all about making the income statement’s bottom line look good. It’s actually more about making sure the bottom line does not look bad!

For more information about the many aspects companies need to consider when contemplating the use of Bitcoins, see Compliance Week’s Virtual Currencies Come with Real Accounting Concerns (subscription required), which includes commentary from Stephen Ambler.

Stephen Ambler is a director at RoseRyan, where he manages the development of the firm’s “dream team” of consultants. His interim CFO stints at RoseRyan have included a social media company and the management of the financial integration process at a company acquired by Oracle. He previously held the CFO position for 13 years at Nasdaq-listed companies.

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