The Coin to embrace! Banks VS Bitcoin
Inspired by the latest episode of Mr. Robot (S03E02), i checked the current status of e-payments, coins etc in the wild. For those watching the show, this article may contain minor spoilers. For those who don't i will explain the basics later.
Current payment solutions
Google recently announced the "Pay with Google" to make the checkout process even easier and faster. Every big company putting resources in their divisions to get a piece of the credit pie.
- Apple Pay is popular in the iOS ecosystem. It advertises as private and secure as it doesn't share the card number with the merchant.
- Square is another popular in the US allowing businesses receiving money on the go, from their mobile devices by scanning your credit card.
- Venmo, which is part of Paypal, allowing person-to-person payments recently announced the roll out of payments to US physical retailers.
- In China apps like WeChat and AliPay dominate there, allowing to pay by scanning a QRcode.
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Source: Analysis c/o Mary Meeker’s 2017 Internet Trends Report (slide 219)
The common thing about the above services is they all go though the banks taking some percent of every payment from the business for the utility they provide.
On the other hand paying with Bitcoin or any altcoin for physical goods isn't as widespread (yet?). There are services to receive Bitcoins in your business but i doubt they are as popular as the above services at this time.
Mr. Robot and Ecoin
Mr. Robot is a series in a realistic world like ours. E Corp is one of the largest multi-national conglomerates in the world, producing phones, computers and having banks that own 70% of the global credit market.
In this episode the CEO of E Corp want China to sign the accord and embrace Ecoin. China is embracing Bitcoin cause of the mining power they have behind it, making the price and power of Ecoin possibly unstable. Of course Ecoin, blockchain or not, behind all the huge banks will not be censorship free.
Having only one option to pay (eg with Ecoin) will make it able for the organization behind it to block you for whatever reason and it is already happened in the past with Wikileaks.
Ecoin adoption as seen in the episode seems very broad as it shows a prostitute using it (saying to scan her QRcode to provide her... services) and other people saying:
Last time I buy from that coffee shop.
They only take Ecoin.
Gotta use Ecoin.
With the exchange rate, dollar's worth shit now.
The exchange is so bad as the show shows us previously in the episode that 3 apples costs 25$ or 5 Ecoins!
How close are we to this kind of currency wars? Is this happening already behind closed doors? Will an altcoin receive that kind of huge adoption in the future in your opinion?
Trends changes continuously. It is bitcoin which is popular right now. But we can't say for how long. The wars is on. Just enjoy every moment by investing at right moment
Not much to invest but its exciting watching the credit system evolve. Steem is something to look out too in the future :)