Bitcoin is passé to many in the tech world these days, but Circle didn’t get the memo: the virtual currency firm is plowing ahead with its outsize ambitions to integrate virtual currency into the global banking system.On Thursday, Circle announced the hiring of Paul Camp, a big name in finance circles to be its Chief Financial Officer.The move is significant since Camp’s resume includes building out the world’s biggest euro settlement platform at Deutsche Bank and, until July, running JP Morgan’s $3.4 billion transactions services shop, which provides payment infrastructure to banks and corporations.The upshot is that a global finance bigwig thinks that bitcoin is ready for primetime — or, perhaps, that Circle paid him enough to make him believe that he does.After all, Camp’s arrival comes at a time when media buzz about bitcoin is flagging and, despite pretty new products from the likes of Circle and rival Coinbase, the currency seems as far from mainstream adoption as ever: — Alex (@alex) December 10, 2014 I spoke to Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire this week, and asked him if he feared that the company would burn through its cash before bitcoin ever gets off the ground.

After all, hiring people like Camp doesn’t come cheap, and nor does paying white shoe law firms to navigate the currency’s ongoing regulatory morass.Meanwhile, Circle and the others have little to speak of on the revenue side — and don’t forget the price of bitcoin itself is barely a quarter of what it was year ago.Allaire, however, was totally unfazed by such skepticism and reiterated his long-held position that he’s playing a long game in which bitcoin, and the public ledger potential of the blockchain, will find a place in global finance.He also disagreed that bitcoin is in a rut.“It definitely doesn’t feel like we’re in a holding pattern.We’re seeing an incredible amount of acceleration in products and capital,” he said, adding that objecting to the slow adoption, “is like complaining about the first web browser in 1994.” Allaire likes to make that point frequently, in part because he was deeply involved in building early http protocol in the 1990’s.

He sees the bitcoin protocol mapping the same sort of development course, and eventually becoming a mainstream financial fixture.Still, it would be helpful to know more about how bitcoin is going to get traction in the big leagues.Allaire didn’t provide too many details, but he did suggest that Camp, Circle’s new hire, would be working his deep ties among bankers and regulators to bring bitcoin inside the mainstream financial fold.track bitcoin transaction idHe also referred several times to “core transaction platforms,” perhaps suggesting the end game for Circle is to introduce a bitcoin-style verification process as a cheaper alternative to what is now used by global clearing houses.bitcoin saudi atmThis is just speculation but, even if Circle got just a foothold in one of the settlement platforms used by global banks, the sheer amount of money that washes through them would make the whole gambit worthwhile.bitcoin public mining pool

As for consumers, who remain oblivious as ever to what bitcoin is all about, that may not matter in the end.In Allaire’s vision, consumers in the future will carry on using dollars or whatever local currency they know — even as bitcoin does its work on the backend.Finally, as to the existential (for some) question of whether bitcoin the currency must remain an intrinsic feature of the blockchain’s ledger function, Allaire said yes, since the “underlying units of the ledger need to have value to facilitate value through it.”bitcoin mining dubaiEditor’s Note: Phillip Kim is a marketing analyst at Snapcard, a bitcoin wallet and bitcoin payment processor.ethereum time per blockFor the first few years, there was no response from Wall Street.bitcoin judgment

The Wall Street Journal didn’t mention bitcoin until a blog post in June 2011.As the bitcoin community waited, advocates and enthusiasts speculated as to why America’s financial strongholds weren’t talking about the digital currency.Did banks not take bitcoin seriously enough to acknowledge it or feel threatened by its potential?ethereum 580Were they passing it off as a trend or trying to censor it from mainstream adoption?bitcoin fbi auctionSurely they weren’t oblivious to the new technology that was coming to eat their lunch.bitcoin robot bonusThings began to change in December 2013, when Bank of America Merrill Lynch became the first major U.S.bank to publish a report on bitcoin.The report, called “: A First Assessment,” acknowledged bitcoin’s potential to become “a major means of payment for e-commerce” and “a serious competitor to traditional money transfer providers.” It also stated “Bitcoin has clear potential for growth,” with a comprehensive analysis of the benefits of bitcoin.

This gave some believers a light of hope that Wall Street would embrace the technology, further reinforced when JPMorgan Chase filed a patent that same month for its own cryptocurrency similar to bitcoin.“…then they ridicule you, and then they fight you…” In January 2014, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon debunked that hope by claiming he wasn’t a fan of b. Soon thereafter, the firm released a report slamming b, calling it “vastly inferior” to fiat currency.Citigroup currency strategist Steven Englander noted to clients that bitcoin faced three major risks: security; competition from other digital currencies; and competition from conventional financial institutions.Goldman Sachs also attacked in a report, claiming it “likely can’t work as a currency,” although “the ledger based technology that underlies it could hold promise.” In March, Morgan Stanley CEO James P. Gorman called bitcoin “totally surreal” and admitted he didn’t understand it.This series of events made bitcoin enthusiasts doubtful that Wall Street was ready to embrace the technology or even take it seriously.

But soon after that, the tides started to turn once again.Morgan Stanley hosted a b event in New York City in March, just a month after its CEO dismissed the currency.Citi released a report in May that recognized bitcoin as a threat to debit and credit card issuers.Deloitte, which had been quiet about the topic, released a report in June 2014: “Bitcoin is best thought of as a natural step in the evolution of money.” In January 2015, the New York Stock Exchange, USAA, BBVA and Citigroup chief executive Vikram Pandit shocked the world by investing in b services provider Coinbase, which then opened the first licensed U.S.A few days later, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss launched Gemini, “a fully regulated, fully compliant, New York-based Bitcoin exchange” that some call the “Nasdaq of b.” In March, Nasdaq announced it would power Noble Markets, giving traditional investors the tools to trade digital currencies as they do with stocks.That same month, Goldman Sachs suggested in a report that bitcoin could shape the future of finance, taking a much more optimistic approach than it had a year earlier.

Even more evidential than public statements and investments is when Wall Street began hiring job candidates with expertise in digital currencies.In January, finance employment agency Glocap posted a “junior b execution trader” position for a hedge fund in San Francisco, and JPMorgan Chase sought an associate with “an opinion on Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies” who is “probably ambivalent about the prospect of working for a large financial institution.” If, at first, the banks didn’t acknowledge bitcoin as a threat to their financial systems, surely they noticed companies in the emerging industry as competition for their top talent.On the same token as new hires, existing traders at prestigious financial firms were attracted to bitcoin.By 2012, bitcoin was so popular among Wall Street traders that employees at Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs had been visiting bitcoin exchange websites as often as 30 times a day.Some enthusiasts on Wall Street had even joined together to raise awareness for bitcoin.

The Digital Currency Council opened its doors in Manhattan in September 2014 to offer consulting, trading and accreditation to financial professionals.In March 2015, a group of Wall Street bankers formed the Alliance as “an advocacy group for Wall Street in the Digital Currency Age.” While Wall Street scrambles to adapt to the changing environment, several high-profile bankers and executives were leaving their prestigious jobs for bitcoin companies.In December 2014, former JPMorgan Chase global head of transactions Paul Camp left the firm to become CFO of Circle, a digital currency wallet company.Former head of global commodities Blythe Masters also left JPMorgan Chase in March 2015 to become CEO of Digital Asset Holdings, a company looking to use bitcoin technology to make trading more efficient for financial institutions.In April, former Morgan Stanley investment manager Jacob Dienelt became head treasurer of Factom, a bitcoin auditing company.The list goes on as industry veterans begin to recognize a shifting paradigm toward digital currency.