Following on the heels of the Citi response to the UK Treasury request for information on Digital Currency; Accenture have come back with their response.
A key message that Accenture have stressed throughout their response is that they are advocating regulation around the wallet – not the blockchain and bitcoin itself. They also suggest that there could be two tiers of wallet, those that are fully KYC checked and can only do business with other KYC checked wallets, leading to a 2-tier ecosystem, a “legitimate” ecosystem” and an “illegitimate” ecosystem.
Accenture state a belief that the regulation of wallets will be essential both to mass adoption of digital currency and also for banking organisations to be fully engaged with companies operating in the digital currency space.
Accenture have steered clear from suggesting an attempt at regulating the underlying protocol or technology. This seems to be based upon a belief that regulating wallets provides adequate regulation rather than any attempt to keep the digital currency space unregulated per se.
An area that Accenture chose not to address in their response was the risk that identifiable wallets pose to the users of digital currency. With a government record of losing personal data on train, on rubbish tips and numerous other “mishaps” over the years; one has to ask how secure this information would be.
Unlike regular bank accounts, blockchain wallet balances are a matter of public record. If it were possible to link the wallet (and I assume by wallet they are suggesting a limited range of identifiable addresses are used as well) then what is to stop the criminal element stealing or otherwise acquiring this wallet information from Government Sources and knowing exactly how much each person has in their digital account? Or maybe that isn’t important?
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