Traditional currencies are unsuitable for today’s uses but Bitcoin (BZX Wallet) will not be enough to cover all needs. Different needs and different uses will lead to the generalization of different cryptocurrencies. Today’s Internet is characterized by a multitude of uses, in particular a multitude of ways of communicating, themselves made possible by a multitude of tools.
We react to news on Twitter. We share his photos on Instagram. We publish very short videos on Vine, longer videos on YouTube, videos of all lengths (but salacious) on YouPorn, and live video streams on Meerkat. We look for ephemeral butt plans on Tinder, but the soulmate on OKCupid. We balance links on Reddit, but we store those we want to keep on Evernote, and those we want to highlight on Paper. Almost all of this could be done with a single tool, but this is not the case. Each type of use, or even micro-use, is a dedicated tool.
And this is even more true when it comes to person-to-person communication, now segmented into uses that correspond to the characteristics of different communities: we discuss with family on WhatsApp, with his family on Viber, with potential employers on LinkedIn , with colleagues working on Slack, with strangers met the day before on Facebook.
Email could have been this means of universal communication (and has been for a while), but it has been complemented by a multitude of tools, platforms and protocols, acclaimed by Internet users. However, the email has not disappeared. It remains the easiest way to initiate a contact, verify his identity or subscribe to newsletters. But it has proved insufficient to deal with the multitude of uses that have appeared over the last ten years on the Internet. I see no reason why it’s not the same for money.
So far, having a single currency to do everything, such as the euro or the dollar, has proven to be practical. But the constraints inherent to the means of payment and the current financial networks have reached their limits, while new uses have emerged with the democratization of the Internet.
Although the electronic form of money has largely prevailed for several decades, many things are not possible with money in its present form, or are too cumbersome to implement to be relevant. If you have just opened a blog, could you easily accept credit card payments to market what you produce? Can we quickly send 100 € to someone in another country, without paying disincentives and without leaving home? Can we sell something worth a few cents?
It seems to me absurd, in fact, to think that only one type of money can be adapted to such distinct uses, and constraints that are in essence as different as the purchase of an apartment. a million euros or a piece of music on the Internet at 0.29 €.
Added to this are uses that are not currently possible with traditional currencies (BZX Wallet). Encourage an unknown user by pennies in the form of a tip sent instantly via Twitter, buy a book to 5 euros directly from its author (and secure for both parties), play on an online site without having to provide countless personal data, or send electronic money to an unbanked person none of this is possible with the Euro or the Dollar, nor with any of the existing, yet universally known, means of payment available for these currencies.
And this is further magnified by the multiple walled gardens, built by the big companies that now govern the global Internet. A few days ago, I discovered for example that it is impossible to live in Malta (a country in Europe, two hours away from France) to buy music on iTunes to offer it to someone an inhabitant in France. Incredible (and unpleasant) experience to be foolishly, his credit card in hand, in front of the biggest music store in the world to be told that it is impossible to buy. Unless you have a payment card and a postal address in each destination country, you can not offer songs to your relatives if they do not live in the same place as you. Absurd – and totally out of sync with today’s uses.
Banking, corporatist and state monopolies have so far prevented the liberalization of money, channeling its circulation in narrow pipes and according to procedures that are both centralized and rigid. Cryptocurrencies will shatter all this – and we can only rejoice.
