Bitcoin Price Up On White House Rep Comments

The Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi expressed support for the future of Blockchain and the Internet of Things this morning. In combination with what a White House representative said late last week, this should be a pretty good start for this week on Bitcoin news. That representative of the White House was White House cybersecurity coordinator and special assistant to the president, Rob Joyce.

Joyce spoke at and answered questions at the Munich Security Conference on the 16th of February, 2018 in an interview with CNBC. "I think we're still absolutely studying and understanding what the good ideas and bad ideas in that space are," said Joyce in response to a question of when Bitcoin regulation would be underway in the United States. "So, I don't think it's close."

Responding to concerns about criminal activities with Bitcoin, Joyce suggested that the United States government was a little worried. "There's benefits to the bitcoin concept – digital cash, digital currencies," said Joyce. "But at the same time, if you look at the way bitcoin works after there is a criminal act that takes place, you can't rewind the clock and take back that currency.

"So if you have a problem with your credit card, you can go to the credit card company and they can undo that purchase and actually get your money back," said Joyce. "With the current instantiation of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, we haven't figured that out yet. So it's a problem."

Joyce may just be phrasing what he's saying a bit incorrectly, as Bitcoin transactions absolutely are tracked an not anonymous as such. The ledger that exists between Bitcoin wallets on the blockchain shows where coins go, where they're from, and when they've transferred. If he was referencing something like Monero – well – that's something different entirely. Watch the words they use and the order they use them in.