“The Federal Reserve appears to have looked at Bitcoin as a potential set of rails for real-time payments in the banking system but shelved the concept for now.
The agency’s white paper on improving the payments system, released Monday, coins a new euphemism for Internet cryptocurrencies (of which Bitcoin is by far the best known): "Digital Value Transfer Vehicles." These are defined as "decentralized digital stores of value that can be exchanged."
One such transfer vehicle, which goes unnamed in the paper, "was not considered a sufficiently mature technology at this time, but was identified for further exploration and monitoring given significant interest in the marketplace," the Fed said. Of the hundreds of cryptocurrencies that have sprouted up in the last few years, we're pretty sure the Fed is not referring to HoboNickels or PhilosopherStone.”
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