2012-04-29 AmericanBanker.com - The Elephant in the Payments Room

[Stephen Gornick]

The Elephant in the Payments Room
by Jon Matonis

We are witnessing something unique in money and payments.  For those that do invest and successfully navigate the potential traps, the reward is a first-mover advantage for a new international monetary unit.
[...]
Here's the important part. Disruption in the unit of account is the way to disrupt the payments space.
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With a nonpolitical monetary unit, many new possibilities become apparent structurally that would not have been contemplated before, such as: peer-to-peer mobile applications that don't require permission from legacy transaction carriers; global remittances that don't require high-fee currency conversion; merchant categories that are no longer disallowed due to fraud and chargeback risk; and merchant reach into countries that are not even on the map for Visa, MasterCard or PayPal.
[...]
Disruptive technology disrupts. That is its mission. It annihilates any substandard process or product in its path and it originates outside of the established paradigm. You don't see it coming.
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A payments startup that ignores Bitcoin in its strategic plan is like a publisher ignoring the Web in 1999. Certainly, innovators can design routes around Bitcoin and established players can dismiss it as insignificant, but that won't make the elephant go away.

 - http://www.americanbanker.com/bankthink/the-elephant-in-the-payments-room-bitcoin-1058703-1.html?zkPrintable=1&nopagination=1

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[BitChick]

"However, a payments startup that ignores Bitcoin in its strategic plan is like a publisher ignoring the Web in 1999. Certainly, innovators can design routes around Bitcoin and established players can dismiss it as insignificant, but that won't make the elephant go away. The savvy and true disruptors already know this."

This is true.  They can ignore the change for while but it does not cause the change to stop!  I guess this is all the better for those of us that are just joining in on BTC.  It gives us more time to invest before it grows even bigger.

[Stephen Gornick]

From Wikipedia:
"The wisdom of the crowd is the process of taking into account the collective opinion of a group of individuals rather than a single expert to answer a question."
 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_of_the_crowd

While angel and venture capital investors may be smart, for whatever reason they,to-date, have been more interested in technologies, companies and processes that essentially become obsolete after bitcoin picks up steam.

Here's an example:

Those with means don't often hear the word "no".  Before bitcoin that was all that the person who would like to play some video poker online had heard.   Investors might want to start seeing where Bitcoin changes "no" to "yes".

When is the last time an investor couldn't go shopping due to the bank having a 3-day hold on deposits?  Of course, never.   Banks only impose these restrictions on those without means.  Bitcoin makes no distinction.  As a payment network with non-repudiable transactions that means there is no such concept of "holding funds".

So that's an example of where an investor's perspective might be so different that the need for Bitcoin or a bitcoin-related business isn't being appreciated.

But there are also bitcoin-related opportunities for online businesses and venture capitalists with the businesses they already have investment in.

When is the last time an investor got a free beer or a nice dinner as compensation for providing helpful advice?   Probably yesterday, as there is no shortage of people willing to provide compensation (in the form of an invitation to coffee if nothing else) to obtain some of an investor's time.  But ask your smart friends how often they got rewarded for providing advice and the answer is likely "rarely if ever".  Or at least, it didn' t before the BitcoinTip bot on Reddit was around.  Now instead of getting rewarded with fake badges, "karma points" lame credits, and +1s these contributors get rewarded instead with something they can use to improve their quality of life.    Every social network or support service could use this type of monetary feedback mechanism to incent participation.

So it isn't just financial industries that bitcoin will disrupt -- but businesses across the spectrum.

[cypherdoc]

"However, a payments startup that ignores Bitcoin in its strategic plan is like a publisher ignoring the Web in 1999. Certainly, innovators can design routes around Bitcoin and established players can dismiss it as insignificant, but that won't make the elephant go away. The savvy and true disruptors already know this."

This is true.  They can ignore the change for while but it does not cause the change to stop!  I guess this is all the better for those of us that are just joining in on BTC.  It gives us more time to invest before it grows even bigger.

very true.