An article appeared in the Wall Street journal commemorating 10 years since Satoshi released his whitepaper entitled “Bitcoin: a peer to peer cash system”. But it’s not a cash system today. Not even Bitcoin Cash has become a cash system, despite trying to be “closer to Satoshi’s vision”. The main reason they haven’t gained mass adoption for payments isn’t securities laws or anything, it’s just a technical reason (scalability) and an economic reason (money in everyday circulation is a local community phenomenon).
The tagline of the article says: The digital currency was meant to be a payments network. That isn’t exactly what happened.
I think that people are starting to recognize that new approaches are needed in order to get people to actually use crypto for payments. Otherwise, they’re going to keep using centralized banks and social networking apps like WeChat to pay each other.
Intercoin can help each community control their own money supply and put rules governing how people can cash in and out. And Intercoin provides liquidity between all communities and also outside currencies (fiat, crypto). If developers can build community currency apps like UBI and Analytics on top of the platform, I think we can kickstart a revolution for the next 10 years: programmable money on a general-purpose community payments platform.
Greg thanks for sharing and we should begin a media outreach with the top influencers. Initial objective is to build relationships and position the company as a thought leader in this space.
The main thing was that bitcoin had the same rigidness as any other currency. You couldn’t change the protocol to meet community needs, and that was a big part of what led to the problems outlined. I agree having a lot of developers building apps on the platform is crucial. Lets make sure we make it easy for them to do.
Spoke to Adam Draper this evening. He asked what will it take for the crypto space to get mass adoption. I told him that we need a technological paradigm shift to occur so currencies can be more than just a medium of exchange. Cryptocurrencies can give the world “decentralized programmable money” that goes beyond just a medium of exchange. Every community can know in real time the consumer price index of any product within its own community. Local fintech will revolutionize how each indiviual interacts within their own community.
If we’re talking mass adaptation, this twitter thread is a must read. When RSS first came out, everyone thought it would see mass adaptation. Too bad the ux just didn’t cut it. Same with crypto; having to deal with addresses and having such a volatile price is a huge bottleneck to mass adaptation
Good idea -> Implementation -> Adoption
You need all three stages. Many ideas don’t get implemented, and many implementations of great ideas don’t get used. You need a certain amount of excitement, the right approach and timing, and a little luck.
For Intercoin to work, it must be implemented well and catch on in communities.
Unfortunately, Bitcoin has not become a means of mass payment and, as you say, the reason is exactly in scalability. But despite that, Bitcoin is a recognizable investment tool that has been tested for years. It is trusted and regarded as a value.