that ended those troubles that led to the good friday agreement itself in turn threatened by the new reality of bragg's it paving the way potentially for a referendum on irish unity but the question of a united ireland won't be decided across traditional dividing lines there are new incentives european union membership an all ireland economy and health service that could displace the sectarian struggles of the past jonah how al-jazeera northern ireland. this is our desire these are your top stories the 4th day of donald trump's 2nd impeachment trial has concluded his lawyers wrapped up the former president's defense arguing the trial as unconstitutional and evidence against trump was fabricated is accused of inciting the rise on capitol hill last month in which 5 people died both sides face questions from senators and

a verdict is expected this weekend and fisher is in capsule hill in the boat hours of proceedings there was a lot of fractious exchanges not least donald trump's team accusing the democrats of prosecutorial negligence saying that they'd edited tapes that they had misrepresented tweets that they had falsified documents that is a big allegation to make the also said that this was driven by hatred by a dislike of donald trump that this was all about punishing him and that they wanted they were exercising a great the degree of apocryphally. you know it to states will revoke the terror designation of yemen's who thiis on tuesday president joe biden the u.n. and aid groups fear blacklisting the hurt these would worsen already catastrophic humanitarian crisis by preventing a deliveries to areas controlled by the rebels but the u.s. state department is warning the group may be hit with more sanctions are to attack

to saudi airport on wednesday. a british human rights lawyer has been elected as the international criminal court's new chief crimes prosecutor after weeks of debate member states voted for karim kawar one of the 4 candidates he'll begin the next 9 year term mid this year the court in the hague candles war crimes genocide and crimes of aggression. the head of the world health organization the origins say the origins of the corona virus pandemic a still not clear following investigative mission in china experts haven't confirmed the source during their trip to woo han where the virus was 1st found in 2019 but it's all but disproved a theory that it came from a lib or a tree that the team says it's probably originated in a bat. that he had lies and he's continues here now to stare out its side story. voters start to cheer me in front of the x.

museum in amsterdam hundreds of protesters gathered to demand the government is locked down with strict and lift a curfew the 1st in the country since world war 2 the threat is that we lose our freedoms the protesters who are not following social distancing routes will be to be ordered to disperse by police but police are trying very hard to confront the scenario that happened last week when thousands were rioting in cities across the battle. after some protesters started throwing stones at letting off fireworks and police on horseback moved in to clear the area. a big moment for the cryptocurrency america's oldest bank says it plans to hold transfer and issue digital currency so should investors and governments widely embrace them and what will this mean for the global economy this is inside story.

hello welcome to the program on conventional for the 1st time ever america's oldest bank b. and why balance says it's planning to offer some crypto currency so this is great news for digital currencies like record which has been soaring to all time highs while investing in it can be a rollercoaster ride that comes with many risks that hasn't stopped the chief executive of tesla mosque from purchasing $1500000000.00 worth of it as well as a besting in a tesla is now expected to accept the virtual money as a form of payment they don't submit along with buying in from institutional investors is pushing the queen's prices to new records going above 48000 poem for the 1st time ever bank b.n.y. mullins decision to allow crypto currencies in its services is another boost for the de. still access but the c.e.o.

of asset servicing and head of digital it being my bell and roman riggleman says in a statement growing client demand for digital assets maturity of advanced solutions and improving regulatory clarity present a tremendous opportunity for us to extend our current service offerings to this emerging field lost a card is also planning to open up its network to selected crypto currencies that had previously provided credit cards allowed people to use the crypto currency but without going through its main platform master card says doing this will create a lot more possibilities for shoppers and merchants allow them to transact in an entirely new form of payment this change may open merchants up to new customers who are already flocking to digital assets with some officials have also showed their support of crypto currencies the mayor of miami francis witt is has written recently proposed a resolution offering to pay municipal employees and because i want to thank the city of miami commission for supporting my resolution which direction city manager

after analysis to procure a vendor to be able to offer our employees to get a percentage of their salary big coining allows our residents to pay for fees in big coin and also would allow the city manager to cooperate with my many county to allow for taxes repeating pickwick it also a request of the state legislature that the city of miami support efforts to make big point an acceptable currency for us to potentially invest in in the future. so let's take a closer look at crypto currency isn't how they work they are of course completely chilled in the form of computer files stored in a digital wallet transactions are made with no middlemen meaning it bypasses banks the currency can be used to buy goods and services but not many retailers except that the payment happens to a system called block chain which records transactions across the internet and stores them in multiple locations but korean was the 1st online currency which was

created in 2009 but since then thousands of other digital currencies have sprung up . of time not to bring in our guest in london we have glenn goodman a financial investor and author of the crypto trader and dale new york william cohen a former mergers and acquisitions investment banker and writer also in london 30 as a video and international side lawyer and barrister at 36 commercial a very well welcome to you all thanks for joining us here on inside story i'd like to begin with you glenn goodman how big is this news from b n y mellon and from mastercard is this bitcoin now well and truly on its way to the moon as proponents would say. i think it's certainly extremely good news for crypto currency in general particularly the b.m.y. melon news because the crypto world has been waiting a very long time for a big asset manager or rather an asset custody company to

basically say yes we're prepared to look after because in and other cryptic currencies to keep them using our traditional financial channels on platforms that we ourselves maintain and and finally you've got such a huge asset manager or asset custody and rather agreeing to do that and that is huge news because it will give a lot of financial institutions and other companies the confidence to buy because in another cryptic currencies it knowing that they will be looked after safely for them by one of the most trusted financial institutions in the world has confidence has been a very big thing that has been a very very volatile asset william cohen what's your take away going to continue to see big quite go up and up or are we going to see another major pullback we've seen it come down what like 80 percent in value in the past to me it has all the

earmarks of a well orchestrated 21st century tulip bulb for a. i know that it proponent just can't get enough of it and in a beeline musk of the world sort of drive the prices higher and higher and it gets sort of swept up into the whole madness of crowds and social media friendly but you know frankly i just feel like it not dissimilar from other acts that bubbles your praises that proponents lock onto and just you know go now kilburn though i'm not particularly confident that it's going to continue and that's where i mean the b.n.y. is news out of the. good news it's just news it's more you know sort of padding of the whole or inflating of the whole bubble currency what is it that you see that the likes of a lawn mosque the likes of jack dorsey and square the likes of pay pal who are on

board with bitcoin what is it that you see that they don't see. i mean they're billionaires. and i don't know if you know they think they will never be back i mean you know money is a crack but in game i mean what why did the dollar have got a why did any current think of value because people believe in it and you don't get a moment people believe in big point i'll come to you south or the as a video do you think other banks are likely to follow in b n y mellons footsteps are they investing are they seeing the value should they be what are the legal constraints that banks might thanks yes i'm afraid i'm going to sound a cautionary note to all that positively. you know use it is good news for instance that the u.s. securities and exchange commission. has recently pushed back you know means if you want gainst the government's current government not if you can do us that could to

currencies are dangerous route for terrorist financing. you know if push back on the december last year since then. failed to notice the hook calls rulemaking where banks in money services businesses would be required to submit reports keep reports very fighting identity or customers in relation to transactions above sentence nationals importing cripple currencies additional assets. where their wallets were not hosted by financial institutions or c.b.c. wallets whole cities by atlanta she's in certain jurisdictions identified by this insane and this would be very onerous new york high end requirements and you see that concern in the recent statements from. the

the. current and. when they were say that they were going to tour they were going to up give some supports to talk about currencies but they were concerned in they said you know in their statements there they were saying not all of today's crypto currency is will be supported by our network. some of them will be but will should be strict compliance protocols. in relation to know your customer requirement. that was good to be used to snuff out illegal activity and induce action in payments networks and you have to remember that currencies are regulated piecemeal flash flash by many different rigorous across the asians you have debt money laundering terrorism financing aimed regulations aims. you also have the money transfer malicious nation so

we. have to be optimistic but not not top to be sick you have to remember that there are many many many places critical mass is a band that's come now to good men what do you say to that particularly when you look at the technical analysis and when you look at the on chain data what do you think. well 1st of all i don't think it's fair to compare it to the tulip bubble the dutch to let bubble was a one off whereas because in now during the previous boom the 2017 boom that i was heavily involved in there was a nagging voice at the back of my mind saying what if this is a chilling bubble because the fact is that bitcoin and all crypto currencies as william quite rightly points out like all money are kind of a confidence trick it's all about faith faith in the u.s. government for example for the dollar and faith in bitcoin for people who believe

that that's the new form of money that will dominate things in the future the true it bubble though as i say was a one off so we had the because in and crypto boom in 2017 and then it cooled off very significantly a lot of criticality lost more than 90 percent of their value over 282019 but the fact is it didn't die it proved its worth by coming back because and in particular to even greater heights and what really gives me enormous confidence this time around is the sheer number of institutions particularly financial institutions but also large companies like tesla who are showing that they are now believing that it is the future that it will be around for a very long time and that they need to make the plumbing the infrastructure and actually buy the assets themselves in order to be part of the future economy as it were there are so many companies and institutions doing this now that i just don't think we can dismiss it as

a temporary phenomenon anymore i do think the prices are in somewhat of a bubble once again they doubled doubled again and then doubled again it is getting a little bit crazy in the short term and it may well crash again like it did in 2017 but i do believe now that cryptic currencies and digital currencies in particular are here to stay william cohen we have you back now and i'd come back to you were talking about faith. i'm wondering what are the sort of macro dynamics that are driving this because in the us and many parts of the world you have governments printing money and people are worried about what that means the value of their money the value of their their cash longer term so is that part of what is driving this gross and adoption of the likes of bitcoin and yes i mean obviously yes i mean clearly the fact that bitcoin is finite. substance by design you know there's whatever 21000000 bitcoins and people are

desperately mining for them and the scarcity value you know in the man yes a function of supply and demand and i think now you see the demand higher than the supply and the prices go is going up again you know i do agree with mr goodman that you know this is a confidence game so the fact that you know it's more and more institutions in the financial sector whether it's you know b.n.y. mellon or you know j.p. morgan chase is now you know being sort of dragged into it because its employees want to trade it and its clients want to use it if more more people have confidence in this thing that frankly there's no reason to have confidence in them that can be a self-fulfilling prophecy it's no different in that sense than the money or gold or any other form of cortical currency or store of value that we use to trade with people need to be able to trade. goods and services and if they have confidence in

bitcoin there's a way to do that then that will be a self-fulfilling prophecy but at the moment this point is just a way to gamble in my opinion ok so also the as it. janet yellen in the u.s. that you bought an administration issue this written statement off to his senate confirmation hearing talking up to handle benefits for the u.s. and she says you know it has potential benefits it also presents opportunities for states and non-state actors looking to circumvent the current financial system but then goes on to say you know it also has the potential to prove the efficacy of the financial system can you talk to me a little bit about those 2 apparently opposing sides here on the one hand she saying well there is you know the potential that this could be used in a very bad way by very bad people on the other had pets maybe it could lead to some inequality pap's in some way it could help our financial system. yes the 1st thing i would have to say those are false dichotomy there i think to stick pins may be

correct. it doesn't necessarily mean that 11 thing is wrong but they do push in different directions that you're not up to you know that there is that reese. criticism be used for evil. for fraud. and can be at the same time do use of another financial asset something that is positive for society as a whole. the question is how do you strike a balance of our cleverly regulation medium ice's the reese of crime walls at the same time maximizes the trust the society will housing these new assets you know that's where the economy's ok and claim goodman i'd like to come back to you what difference does it make when the likes of master card or pay pal

say hey you know we're going to let you use that coin as a means of actually paying for things is that is that where the cryptocurrency or big corns value comes from its ability to be use every day or is it more as a as a store of value investors buying and holding. yeah it's the store of value and the interesting thing is actually that when william referred to it as as a tool it bubble juror in the 2819 slump as i said the back of my mind i was thinking you know could that have been a one off is are these assets just going to slowly die as people lose interest in them because because like william said it's all about faith it's all about belief do rebuild leave these things are going to do well in the future and then they become a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy but what was interesting over the past year i think cove it may be the reason why they've come back stronger than ever because they create kovi created a new narrative because of a cryptic currencies the idea of bitcoin as a digital gold basically when the federal reserve turned on the money printing and

started massively expanding their monetary policy in order to try and combat the deflationary effects of cove it that scared a lot of people and made them think well they're just printing money endlessly we don't believe in the dollar anymore it's shook investors faith in the dollar and made them think that maybe they're the dollar was going to be so inflated and the dollar would depreciate in value so much that they needed a harder currency now traditionally that harder currency they would have flocked to would have been gold and they did flock to it to some extent but the younger generations felt that we had a new digital gold because because it can only be created in very small quantities and a finite amount of venture it will stop being created all together at in about 100 years time but you know even now there are only tiny amounts of nick point in every single day so it makes people feel that it's

a harder currency than the dollar and so that's why they've been flocking to it and i think that you know that that narrative will continue to prevail as long as there is money printing by central banks if the central banks get their act together and start having what i would consider a more. sensible monetary policy install reigning in all that new money send them behind people when be so interested in bitcoin anymore they will be so interested in gold anymore either ok i think we need to talk about the security issue william cohen you know the book chain itself has been described as very very safe but the personal security of one's wall that perhaps not so much how secure is a crypto currency like that coin or theory of you know security i mean you know if it's coin and these digital currencies they're all about the narrative everybody wants to talk about the narrative i mean and it's such an exciting story is that if i'm buying just and well i mean you know until you can use this

point to buy things what's the use of it it's just a way to gamble and that everybody's excited about it last week everybody was excited about game stop this week they're excited about bitcoin because iran must decided to you know buy a 1000000000 and a half dollars unit because nothing on must like more than you know making people crazy so you know to me you know that people talk about and talk about leisure here they talk about the security the time you know we'll have to just you know wait i mean at the moment it's all about faith and confidence and if people want to pretend that this is a good store of value then the price will still go up if you know it some point barricade will start game stop with the great store of value can i ask is there any value at which bitcoin could get to and when she would change your opinion of it if it cohen reached 100000 dollars 200000 dollars would that change your opinion. you know what would change my opinion is if you can use this thing wisely whatever it

is the currency to buy things if i can use bitcoin to buy a house you know regularly in a liquid way not just in a one off way but bill in a liquid way on a daily basis it's part of my daily life yes ok maybe bitcoin and it would if i could get my hands on it i mean i can always get my hands on dollars and use them to buy a house. i mean you can't do that with point a moment except in one off your can suffer the as of a i want to talk a little bit about the difference between stable coins by which i mean coins at the countries which are linked to say the dollar and also then you have central banks now getting involved in digital currencies what does that say to you about the role of digital currencies and the adoption of course of digital currencies is this central banks looking at the current things and getting nervous because they want

to continue to control money or is there something else at play here. oh i think i think. it's all of this. and i think i think that you can see that in some countries you have to delete a situation in india that is modeled on the chinese regulation regime which effectively bond trading and use usage short quick took currency the wires at sit while the same time the government is working on using its own virtual currency china impose a ban on dean usual offerings of course in 2017 and ask if the currency exchanges to shut down since then china central bank has also blocked all access all domestic and foreign currency could the currency exchanges. but i think maybe it's a little be more nuanced than that because for instance there's a report of last year by the bee gene arbitration corporation where saying that china's prohibition of bitcoin is not exactly as suggested because

the the chinese legal illegal stansell group the currency like it quite needs outlined by major quit to relate to related activities that are prohibited by the government but at the same time allows some other to teasing other types of curls of course all of our. activities so it is a very nuance and situation ok where we've got about 2 minutes left i'd like to come back to you glenn goodman want to you think about about what you heard earlier from from william cohen about the idea of not having its use case until you can spend it when you go to buy a pair of pants. you know whatever you go down to the dairy and buy a bottle of coke or whatever did did you agree with that sentiment. you know i actually do agree with william you refer to mastercard earlier in a and then move to integrate or to allow payments using digital currencies and i

didn't really give you a proper answer there the fact is they're not going to allow people to use because when they're talking about digital currencies they were sort of referring vaguely to what will probably be the central government based stable coins that you're talking about a sort of digital dollar that kind of thing because they consider currencies like big corn to be far too volatile in value obviously they shoot up and down in value you don't want to sort of get some big corn one day and then find out when you want to buy a cup of coffee that you've lost 30 percent of the value of the money you're about to buy a cup of coffee where it's just not usable on a wide scale for every day payments at the moment that we don't have the infrastructure and the actual price of it is too volatile and that goes for a lot of other correct and how that change your next 10 to 15 years. it will change everything is going to change because there's going to be a huge almighty battle between the central bank digital currencies the ones that

are based on the old fear currency what we're seeing in china government is going to be a fight between that and the decentralized digital currency is like big calling and we just don't know who's going to win but let's face it the governments have got power so that certainly gives them the advantage but it's a fast * moving sector to say the least thank you so much for all of your time glenn goodman william cohen and the as evade. and i think thank you t 2 for what you can see the program again any time by visiting our website al-jazeera dot com and for further discussion things go to our facebook page that's facebook dot com ford slash a.j. inside story you can also join the conversation on twitter our handle is at a.j. inside story for me can belt and from the entire team here and all of us and. on counting the cost where has iraq's oil wealth gone from fans from civil servants

to corrupt politicians to take a closer look at the m.r.i. make technology behind covert 19 vaccines how long before it's used to find the cure for cancer counting the cost of al-jazeera i care about how the u.s. engages with the rest of the world i cover for impulse the natural thing here already this is a political impasse here's the paul are we telling a good story. merely effective in taking you into a place that you might visit otherwise and to actually feel that you were there joggers in new delhi take advantage of the relatively clean air after weeks of toxic small stopped people from venturing outside institutions including harvard say air pollution is leading to more severe cases of the coronavirus and more deaths from it and nowhere in india is the situation worse than in daddy the number of cases authored record highs and where

a desperate situation of the indian government set up a new commission to monitor sources of and pollution across 5 known for indian state's health experts and mention the same thing warning for months that the easing of the lockdown would lead to an increase in pollution and the impact that would have on those as the cause of $19.00 oh it's one of the most recognized sites around the world saying for support from far and wide but for the slams back home it's more than just a football club and you want to polish it should be left for. politics and. the passion and the politics over liverpool f.c. the defiant joint. part of the fans who make football series on al-jazeera. the latest news as it breaks human rights groups are questioning why people are taken to this isolation senators and the treatment they receive once they are there . detailed coverage beyond groups now control the villages that we can see on the

other side of the river people live on this side so they can hear gunfire when they're fighting from around the world months after that i'll volcano eruption they see their harvest are now back to normal ready. it is constitutional cancel culture. donald trump's impeachment defense lawyers wrap up their case denying the former president inside the capitol attack. proceedings have finished for the day after senators question both sides a verdict is expected this early is this week and. by money inside this is.