John Haar, a former wealth manager at financial institution Goldman Sachs, believes the lack of legacy finance support for Bitcoin is due to a poor understanding of the cryptocurrency.
Haar’s views were expressed in an essay on Aug. 14 originally sent to retail clients of bitcoin brokerage platform Swan Bitcoin. Haar previously worked at Wall Street wealth management giant Goldman Sachs for 13 years before joining Swan Bitcoin in April 2022 as Managing Director of Private Client Services.
The essay explains that not only do people in “legacy finance” fail to understand what he believes to be one of the main principles of Bitcoin (BTC), they are lost on the idea of solid money in general, leading to negative opinions about crypto, according to Haar .
“After many conversations, I can say that if there are people in legacy finance who have a well-researched stance on why bitcoin is not a good form of money or why bitcoin will not succeed, I have not been able to find them. “
Haar noted that he became interested in Bitcoin in 2017 based on the hype he saw about it in traditional media.
He believes Bitcoin’s history and fundamentals inspired him to discuss it with anyone, adding that Bitcoin “improves gold’s shortcomings.”
On the other hand, Haar notes that Wall Street’s negativity stems from six different reasons stemming from a lack of research into Bitcoin and an understanding of history. He acknowledged that learning the Bitcoin lexicon and its underlying principles is a “scary task,” but that people in legacy finance are doing themselves a disservice by pretending to understand it.
“It’s far more common to pretend to be knowledgeable about a particular topic and to have strong opinions regardless of underlying knowledge — and this is especially true on a topic that touches the world of investing.”
He also believes that conditioning by central government planning, people who generally follow consensus and think only of its application in developed countries, and a desire to maintain the status quo are other contributing factors. Haar said these last four aspects work together in various ways to act as a legacy finance shield to defend the financial systems that are already in place.
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Haar adds that “there’s nothing inherently bad about these things,” but notes that these behaviors prevent people in legacy finance from becoming independent thinkers and early adopters of new technologies.
He also pointed out that people in legacy finance are often highly specialized in their field, which he says causes these people to have tunnel vision into their own world.
“They make a living by knowing the ins and outs of their corner of the financial services sector. There is little incentive for them to study the basics of the system.”
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