Imagine a world where 2.5 billion people don’t have bank accounts, credit card fraud amounts to $190 billion per year, and global remittance services take $50 billion in fees. Sadly, this world is not fictional. This is the current state of the global financial system.
Enter Bitcoin.
“The most important invention in the history of the world since the Internet.” — Roger Ver, Bitcoin Angel Investor
While the media loves to poke fun, Bitcoin is bringing an entirely new frontier to the global financial industry. Just like the web democratized communication and information, bitcoin will democratize the financial industry. Bitcoin is a
Credit card payments, money remittance and online purchases are stuck in the 90's compared to mobile phones and the internet.
Bitcoin will do to money what the internet did to information.
Let’s think back to what life was like pre-internet.
COMMUNICATION
Before there was email, cell phones and texting, communication was a drag. Calling family on the other side of the country, have fun paying $3 per minute. Need a contract sent from New York to London, try fedex. Need to get a hold of your doctor who’s on vacation, try her pager.
INFORMATION
It’s hard to imagine life without google, wikipedia or facebook. Doing research for a class paper, grab an encylopedia (if you can find one). Making dinner plans for saturday night, pick up a 2lb phone book and call a restaurant. (Seriously, this was reality)
The internet made our lives easier, cheaper, faster and more productive. We are better off because of it.
Now let’s look at the state of the global financial system today.
- Every monetary system is based on centralized, government backed and issued fiat currency with no commodity backing.
- Governments print money at will and use creative techniques to keep inflation under control. Sometimes it can’t be stopped. (Venezuela)
- Credit card transactions pass through half a dozen middle parties resulting in unnecessary fees and overhead.
- International money transfers are slow, costly and take days for the majority of the world’s population (not to mention corruption).
- Credit Card fraud amounts to $190 Billion per year in the US and
- 2.5 Million people around the world don’t have bank accounts.
These are serious, systemic problems that need to be addressed. It’s about time money caught up with the internet. Bitcoin is the first practical solution with real promise to solve these problems. We are living through the most revolutionary time in modern finance…and we’ve only touched the tip of the iceberg.
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To learn more about Bitcoin see the relevant links below:
Marc Andreessen
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/01/21/why-bitcoin-matters/
Fred Wilson
http://www.usv.com/posts/bitcoin-as-protoco
Chris Dixon
http://cdixon.org/2013/12/31/why-im-interested-in-bitcoin/
Naval Ravikant
http://startupboy.com/2013/11/07/bitcoin-the-internet-of-money/