Сryptocurrencies are still at the Darwinian stage - chief strategist of Julius Baer

Cryptocurrencies cannot compete with fiat money as they lack trust so far, according to Christian Gattiker-Ericsson, chief strategist of the Swiss banking group Julius Baer.

“It’s still a key topic. Someone needs to be able to transfer the trust that is inherency in a currency, central banks and governments to put this into the virtual, decentralised world,” he said in an interview with Arabian Business

We are yet to find cryptocurrencies use cases that can be attractive to the general public, according to  Gattiker-Ericsson. He believes that the industry of digital assets is at its early stages, while the assets themselves are at the stage of natural selection.

He emphasized that a lot of cryptocurrencies had limited supply. It makes them closer to gold than to money.

More broadly, blockchain technology has “a number of potential use cases” and can “change the rules of the game,” Gattiker-Ericsson added. However, this technology is also mostly experimental at this stage.

Earlier, the head of Julius Baer, Markets, Peter Gerlach, stated that the bank believes in the future of digital assets as a full and sustainable class of investment assets. The comments followed Julius Baer's plans to enter the cryptocurrency industry.

In a March 2018 Julius Baer CEO Bernhard Hodler compared cryptocurrencies to “gambling”. However, earlier this year tthe Swiss bank provided its customers with access to digital assets though a partnership with  SEBA Crypto AG.