Analysts: bitcoin is not money, only an asset that is "resistant to censorship"

Bitcoin is a "class of assets that are not subject to censorship," but it's also not quite money, analysts at Bernstein, based in New York, say. According to Business Insider, in a message that was sent to the company's customers on Wednesday, Bernstein analysts conducted a study of this issue, ultimately suggesting that although bitcoin possesses some characteristics of money, it does not comply with the definition that is currently applied to money. Fee money is still the main form of financial regulation - governments still collect taxes in fiat money, and salaries are still paid in fiat money, "the report explains." Thus, today bitcoin emerged only as a class of assets that "are not subject to censorship."

In particular, analysts believe that the bitcoine ecosystem is more like an independent economy than, say, just a network of digital money.

"Bitcoin can be considered as a virtual" medium of means ", which is supported by a decentralized" trust "network - a new crypto-economy with its own protocol or policy," the company wrote in a statement. "The loyalty of its citizens - software developers, miners, investors, those who from the very beginning accepted [crypto-currencies], gives value to this network."

Such definition of analysts is unlikely to affect the supporters of virtual currencies, which say that crypto-currencies represent a new form of money. In fact, this is a key point, which has attracted the attention of both supporters and critics of bitcoin since bitcoin drew public attention.