John Haar, a former asset manager at Goldman Sachs, believes that the lack of support for Bitcoin from traditional financial institutions like Goldman Sachs is due to a lack of understanding of the cryptocurrency.
Haar’s thoughts were shared in an essay on August 14, originally distributed to clients of Bitcoin platform Swan Bitcoin. With 13 years of experience at Goldman Sachs, Haar joined Swan Bitcoin as the managing director of Private Client Services in April 2022.
According to the essay, those in “legacy finance” not only struggle to grasp one of Bitcoin’s core concepts, the idea of sound money, but also tend to have negative views of the crypto due to a lack of understanding.
“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 was not able to find them.”
Haar became interested in Bitcoin back in 2017 because of the buzz surrounding it in the mainstream media. He found the history and principles of Bitcoin compelling and believed that it improves upon the drawbacks of gold.
He highlighted six reasons for the negativity towards Bitcoin on Wall Street, attributing it to a lack of research and historical understanding. Haar observed that many in legacy finance choose to take strong stances on topics they might not fully comprehend, especially when it comes to investing-related matters.
“It’s much more common for one to pretend to be well-versed on a given topic and take a strong opinion regardless of one’s underlying knowledge — and this is especially true for a topic that touches the world of investing.”
Haar also mentioned that factors like government control, herd mentality, overlooking developing countries, and a resistance to change play a role in shaping the negative views towards Bitcoin. He noted that these factors act as a shield for legacy finance to defend the existing financial systems.
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Haar emphasized that while these behaviors are not inherently negative, they hinder individuals within legacy finance from being innovative thinkers and early adopters of new technologies.
He pointed out that individuals in legacy finance are often highly specialized in their fields, which can sometimes limit their perspective to their specific domain.
“They earn a living by knowing the specifics of their corner of the financial services sector. There is little incentive for them to examine the fundamentals of the system.”
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