More banks are looking into the possibility to use bitcoin's underlying technology, the blockchain, to develop their own solutions without necessarily relying on bitcoin itself, we read on the American Banker website:

Ask a U.S. banker about the prospects for bitcoin, a digital currency with no trusted central authority or mechanism to reverse transactions, and you're likely to get a lukewarm answer.

But financial institutions are increasingly taking an interest in bitcoin's recordkeeping system, known as the blockchain, a so-called distributed ledger that can be used to track much more than stateless electronic tokens.

Bank of New York Mellon, for example, has created its own digital currency, BK Coins, and built an employee recognition application that rewards IT staff with the tokens, which can be redeemed for gift cards and vouchers.

CBW Bank, an innovative community bank in Weir, Kansas, is building a risk management system incorporating cryptocurrency technology. USAA has a team of researchers looking into the potential of the blockchain.

These institutions see possibilities for efficiency and security improvements in areas like payments and securities handling through the use of the blockchain.

The Bitcoin market cap plays a key role in making sense of Bitcoin value predictions of $10,000, $100,000 and even $1 million.

First, I must point out that, technically speaking, the "Bitcoin market cap" is something of a misnomer. It's what people have come to call the total value of all the bitcoins mined so far multiplied by the current Bitcoin price.

The reason is that it mimics the market cap of a stock. But while the term is not quite accurate, the Bitcoin market cap is a convenient shorthand for describing what all the world's bitcoins are worth at a given point in time.