Thanks for sharing this @bwells! I think there is a lot to be said for three banks doing this simultaneously.. they probably met and came to this conlcusion, which in one way I can understand. If i was the CEO of a huge bank and I saw an asset that fluctuated as much as BTC, I may have made the same decision.

As an individual, it is easy to frown upon such decisions, but it is important that we understand their point of view. While I believe in the future of cryptocurrencies (I work full time in ICO consulting, online course creation and blogging now), I am not sure if BTC is the one that will be widely adopted. Cryptocurrencies with more real world use cases are likely to be adopted, and secure applications are likely to be built as side chains of BTC (due to the amount of mining that has been done to secure the network). To sum up, I am bullish on the market long term, but I am not sure which cryptocurrency will be number one in three or four years time - I am doubtful it will be Bitcoin. Although I could be completely wrong as it is much more widely known and that could grow!

I am extremely bullish on STEEM, and I am currently setting up my own Steemit advertising campaign and incubator for newcomers. I would love to talk to you more about it if you are interested - are you available on Discord or Steemit Chat?