Bitcoin Forum

Finextra Future Money provokes strong views on fintech innovation

Edit - forgot the link:  http://www.finextra.com/news/fullstory.aspx?newsitemid=26027 (http://www.finextra.com/news/fullstory.aspx?newsitemid=26027)

Fraud is good, Pingit is rubbish and Swift will be dead within three years. There was no shortage of controversial and provocative views at a lively Finextra Future Money conference this week at Canary Wharf's Level39.

More than 400 people from the fintech world signed up for the conference and the vast majority battled tube strikes, fog and even a bomb scare to get to One Canada Square to explore the new wave of innovation sweeping across the financial services sector. Alessandro Hatami, digital payments and innovations director at Lloyds Banking Group kicked things off. He used his keynote to unleash an impressive battery of stats, revealing that, just three years after the bank launched an app, 30% of logins are now mobile.

In a wide-ranging talk, Hatami gave enthusiastic backing to the use of big data, cautious support to crypto-currencies and mobile NFC payments and, perhaps most surprisingly, a warm welcome to fraud...albeit only as a tool for forcing bankers to innovate.  Fintech may have captured the zeitgeist but, if the Future Money audience is any guide, it is still a niche area with huge room for growth. Throughout the event, delegates were asked: have they signed up for Paym, have they used mobile NFC payments, have they got a bitcoin wallet, have they used crowdfunding platforms?

Despite the nerdy demographic, in each instance only a handful of people raised their hands.

The area of fintech with the firmest grip on the zeitgeist is bitcoin. IBM's Richard Brown says that the emergence of crypto-currencies is similar to the rise of the Web and the graphical browser because it destroys islands and creates an open network. By removing the need for intermediaries such as banks, it will revolutionise how we pay and have a huge impact on costs.   Regulators are certainly now beginning to take the matter seriously. Ven Currency founder Stan Stalnaker informed delegates that at a recent meeting with US watchdogs he was told that FinCen and Treasury experts expect bitcoin to be one of the world's top 20 currencies within 20 years.

In a later panel, investor Udayan Goyal made the boldest prediction of the day: that crypto-currencies will kill Swift within three years. To back up his claim, Goyal used the example of Fidor Bank, which now uses Ripple to move money between three countries without even touching Swift.

Inevitably at an event in the heart of London's financial services centre, there was much soul searching at Future Money from banks trying to work out how they can harness the new wave of fintech innovation.

Some attendees voiced scepticism about the recent rush from big banks to embrace 'innovation', with tools such as Barclays Pingit derided as marketing gimmicks that do little to change the way people interact with their money.

The popularity of labs, accelerators and incubators was also questioned. Are financial services firms attaching themselves to these projects to tick an easy box, for cheap PR? As we sat in the Level39 lab, Accenture's Samad Masood cut to the chase, asking "who cares" if PR is involved? As long as it promotes innovation, it's a good thing.

Sounds like quite a bullish outlook!

Fidor uses ripple?

i think some context.. fidor used ripple to test the possibilities, involving 3 test transactions.. fidor does not use ripple for regular transaction's as ripple is still not fully compliant or bug free.

secondly ripple is not a replacement of bank transfers, due to the fact that for instance:

john in Germany wants to change his euros into dollars so he can move it to Alice in USA.
john finds jane to swap Euro's for dollars.
Alice receives dollars.

now thats the inner workings of ripple stage one.

but now John has to a Euro debt
and Alice has to cash out ACTUAL dollars into a bank account.

so the banking world would show that jane transfers actual dollars into alices bank account.
and then janes customers who want euros would receive them from johns bank account until johns ripple debt is zero'd

all ripple does is avoid exchange rates and fee's.

put simply WIRE TRANSFERS STILL OCCUR and in the case of Fidor bank, it just means that fidor does not have to themselves change euros into dollars. they simply pay euros to other euro accounts from (janes customer base)

They are a bank not a customer thus ripple wont provide the secret banking friendships they have with other banks.

source? link?

you will find the research by googling "fidor payward kraken" that way you can find the info yourself instead of disbelieving the info im spoon feeding.

but anyway to keep it in context
payward (ripple) CUSTOMERS use krakens bank account (john) to withdraw funds to euro bank accounts. and
payward (ripple) CUSTOMERS use krakens bank account (john) to deposit euro funds to credit their ripple balance.

fidor still does the wire transfer between krakens bank account and customers personal euro bank accounts.

summary
until ripple and bitcoin move to a "cash in hand only" process via local meetups and ATM's, bank accounts and wire transfers will still occur

Shoot sorry about that.

Totally forgot the link.

http://www.finextra.com/news/fullstory.aspx?newsitemid=26027

Updated first post.

...

Excellent post, BittBurger.

An interesting prediction re destruction of SWIFT in 3 years.  But, I would argue that many predictions of an "imminent this" or an "imminent that" usually are wrong, at least in the short-term.  Exhibit A would be Bitcoin itself!  While growing nicely, it has changed very little so far...

SWIFT is not going anywhere for a long time.  Our business in Peru uses wire transfers to Asia to buy our products.  3 years?  No way.  10 years?  Well, maybe...  "10 years is longer than it used to be."

Re other bad (or untimely let's say) predictions, America has not gone down the toilet (neither, for that matter has Greece) yet, despite ominous trends and indeed some suffering.  But a SHTF has not hit Europe yet.  Things could be much worse...

There are several reports of the BRICS countries instituting their own international settlement system, as an alternative to SWIFT. It's possible your business may find it more convenient to use such a system, if Asia is a source of imported goods for you.

I agree, this was an excellent write-up.

It is my view that Bitcoin adoption will proceed in the same fashion as the US debt.
That is to say, the most recent time period saw the greatest advance.
They're exponential.
Both are just picking up steam.
SWIFT will follow the USD.
Could exponential adoption rates for Bitcoin, and exponential dollar destruction lead to the a massive shift in the global monetary order, with SWIFT being made obsolete, within 3 years?

That doesn't seem so outrageous to me.

FinCen and Treasury experts expect bitcoin to be one of the world's top 20 currencies within 20 years.
Who would rather aim for top 10 within 7 years.  :)

Being in the top 20 should be a trillion dollar market cap, right? Which would put bitcoins value at $100,000.

20 years?  Bleh... that's kinda depressing.

I'm hoping more like 3-5 years.

Great things and huge trends take time to develop.
Bitcoin is growing rapidly so many exciting changes can happen within 3 to 5 years.

bitcoin from now
01 year = $1000
02 year = $1000-$3000
03 year = $3000-$6000
04 year = $6000-$9000
05 year = $9k - $12k
...
...
10 year = $50k - $55k
...
...
20 year = $100k - $?

(dont knit pick the numbers, i know the first 10 years will actually show larger climbs, and then slowdown as the price stabilizes making years 18-20 not much noticable difference leadings SLOWLY upto $100k)

be patient. all good things come to those who wait

Seems about right.

Fidor Becomes First Bank to Use Ripple Payment Protocol:

• http://www.coindesk.com/fidor-becomes-first-bank-to-use-ripple-payment-protocol/ (http://www.coindesk.com/fidor-becomes-first-bank-to-use-ripple-payment-protocol/)

Being in top 20 currencies list is always good. Even if it would take 20 years.

After all, we are still only early adopters. Even though there were great growth of bitcoin world in recent years, there is still a lot of place to expand.

[facepalm]
so you googled the term i said and your response and entire research is the copy and paste job of coindesk!!

coindesk doesnt make the news they copy it. coindesk read this forum thread, infact it read this very thread topic we are using now, and just browsed through the limited information from the OP's quote and link.

they did not however check out fidor directly, nor did they check out payward. so your research mission turned out as a dog following its own tail.

try going a few layers deeper then what has been quoted at that meeting and then copied and pasted. verify the news by looking behind the scenes.

here ill spoonfeed you some info about how coindesk tries creating news

the link you posted.. has a quote from fidor

"With Kraken, we can enable our customers to trade Bitcoin and other digital currencies just as securely, easily and flexibly as they trade other foreign currencies today"

the reason i wrote kraken, although coindesk wrote ripple. is because coindesk edits a quote to become ripple. yet when you google the whole quote using the word kraken you will see it's a 8 month old quote about, to be put short. how kraken now has a business account. to accept deposits and do withdrawals, after losing its capital one account (which was not registered as a business account to be used for sending funds to multiple customers)

yeah, i guess 20 years in our days is such a long time.

lets say in 10 years, ill go with that.

20 years comes with the implicit assumption that there will be no major fiat implosions (sending masses toward safety of crypto) within that time frame. I find this to be a dubious claim (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQdmsL147j0).