In his book “The Bitcoin Standard” author Saifedean Ammous claimed that the future of finance will depend on cryptocurrencies. The history channel club coin 1776 value.
Here at American Bankruptcy Institute, we reached out to experts in the crypto-community of Silicon Valley, who have backgrounds in law, economics and business. These experts discussed what they think could happen with bitcoin from a financial standpoint over the next few years. Here is what these people had to say:
1) Nick Sullivan – Managing Partner at Placeholder VC:
Bitcoin is one part payment system and one part decentralized application platform for transactions. What’s happened with payment systems is that a handful of players have taken over the global marketplace. Alipay, WeChat Pay, Venmo and PayPal have become entrenched in their respective countries, in most cases due to network effects. As a result they have captured most of the payment activity in their markets.
During the same time period we’ve seen a rise in decentralized applications on top of blockchain protocols like Ethereum, where anyone can create their own token and/or application without having to bootstrap a new network. We’re seeing an increasingly parallel development of entrenched payment systems alongside open blockchain networks with native tokens that run on top of them.
2. Stephen Pair – Co-Founder and CEO of BitPay:
If you have something as simple as a payment engine, if you can just make it easy to get money from A to B, then people will use it. We already have a payment system in the United States called “cash.” From many perspectives, bitcoin will be the same way.
I think we’re seeing more and more companies that are based on bitcoin emerge just like we saw new financial institutions emerge during the Internet bubble in 1997-98. They are using it as a basis for building new products or technologies. Right now, we’re seeing a lot of innovation because of bitcoin. I think that will continue long into the future.
3. Peter Van Valkenburgh – Director of Research at Coin Center:
The bitcoin community is going to continue to build infrastructure which will ultimately support a wide variety of activities. But I think it’s not going to be something as simple as electronic money or payments where one company owns the entire market. We’re going to see a lot of people building infrastructure, but I don’t see anyone creating gated gardens or being able to lock people in.
4. David Johnston – Founder of BitAngels:
It’s not just about payments, but also smart contracts, stable coins and new ways of managing assets like securities and derivatives.
5. William Mougayar – Author of “The Business Blockchain:”
About half of the world’s unbanked adults in developing countries are willing to do business with bitcoin. It’s a payment system that doesn’t need an institution like PayPal or Western Union… we’re seeing a lot of companies increasingly going into emerging markets, especially in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
6. Lawrence Wintermeyer – Executive Director at Bitcoin Association (California):
Bitcoin will be used as a “settling coin” for all kinds of assets. We’re seeing more and more firms moving into this space from Wall Street to Silicon Valley to London and Singapore. [They] want to trade something like foreign currency risk swaps or derivatives on a blockchain… they’re using bitcoin as a kind of “settling coin.”
7. Peter Vessenes – Founding Partner at New Jersey Blockchain:
The bitcoin technology is scalable enough to support worldwide payments. There will be some winners and losers, but the key thing that’s happening is that people are realizing how much economic pressure has been generated by the banks and financial institutions with respect to money in general being centralized by them. They have created a lot of friction for people’s ability to do business since basically since 1980. Bitcoin and blockchain technology is going to disrupt that system from top to bottom.
8. Jeremy Allaire – CEO of Circle:
Bitcoin is a payment system which means some people will be winners and losers. It’s not going to be like the internet where you can have your own website and sell things online. What we’re seeing is that we have an ecosystem of companies using this technology to do transactions, but there are other aspects where bitcoin will work as a settlement coin for certain trading assets. So one thing I would say about this industry is that it’s sort of like the shipbuilding revolution in the 18th century in Holland; you’ll have some people who are building ships and getting rich, but ultimately more people will get rich because there’s greater liquidity for their investments because they can trade it.
Summary:
Our experts reached a consensus that the future of bitcoin is bright. However, they also agreed that it will not be easy to predict what will occur in the future. The decentralized nature of bitcoin allows people to experiment and innovate with its technology in various ways, which will enable it to continue being an innovative force in the FinTech world.
