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"IBAN Banking System"? Do they relaise the USA does not use IBANs and plenty of countries outside Europe use it (such as Tunisia, Belarus and, er, Russia).

The mood music from UK is that LEI is going to be mandated in CHAPS payments as they migrate to ISO20022 format.

Interesting article that hits on the key issue with bitcoin wallets, namely that the coins are identifiable, but the holders are anonymous. Different from standard bank accounts where the holders are identifiable but the coins are anonymous.

Which explains why the distributed ledger technology is most useful for tracking exchange of things that are individually identifiable.

I'm just a layman, but I'll have a go:

1. Implementing it was cheap, but the distributed hardware is not. For other projects using a blockchain (not bitcoin) then there is the additional expense of creating their own bespoke blockchain from scratch.

2. Because it is not as useful as other databases.

3. Probably didn't anticipate the exponential growth over time.

4. Mining gets harder as time goes on, which is why mining is increasingly dominated by fewer miners (with dangerous implications for transaction verification and forks). I do not know about adding in transaction fees, but these will likely kill bitcoin off.

5. Because blockchain is inherently inefficient as a database.

6. Not sure - I thought that was the main use case for bitcoin.

7. Bitcoin has not overcome the problem of conversion to real currency. The exchange is problematic, and certainly costly.

8. So is "Bit", which is not physical. It merges the two.

9. Pass.

10. Because of anonymity. Same reason it is used by criminals (e.g. silk road) and those avoiding laws to move currency (e.g. Cyprus, Greece).

11. Yes. It will also break the encryption opening the door to theft of coins.

12. Probably because of bitcoins clear usefulness for fraud/crime.

An excellent article - it is about time someone pointed out that blockchain is essentially an inefficient technology that is only suitable in cases where there is no reliable central authority. And even in those cases it is vulnerable to a single authority dominating the consensus process.

Don't know why they have to go through the hassle of a cryptocoin and blockchain - surely a simple internal Citi message format would be quicker and just as efficient.

Assume they are proposing: Citi Country A Currency A, convert to citicoin, reconvert to Citi Country B Currency B to pay beneficiary.

More efficient: Citi in Country A instructs Citi in Country B to pay Currency B to beneficiary.

Hope IS don't further re-name themselves to something like Valiant Islamic State Association ...

Maybe this is a matter of definitions. If you get access then, by definition, you become a bank. So it is impossible to give a non-bank access because once they get access they become a bank.

Is it possibly leaving the door open for future payment systems - and is a way of preventing non-European payment systems operating in Europe from discriminating?

$4.50 on a $50 transfer - ouch - that's almost 10% (and much more for lower amounts). The other services must have been brutal.