“I don’t see any other barriers to mass adoption of this aside from the image. It’s easy to use, super transparent and you don’t have to take any risk as a merchant.”
“Merchants, especially internationally, if they have an order coming from Nigeria with a credit card, they’re probably not going to accept it,” Rambaud explained. “But with bitcoin, there can be a different strategy, because it’s a guaranteed payment.”
Rambaud further stressed that large merchants have an incentive to reduce the high fees they currently pay to accept payment, suggesting that any solution that attacks this pain point is likely to spark interest.
“Merchants are looking at how they can lower their cost for accepting payment and they’re seeing bitcoin as a way to lower that cost,” he added.
Key to lowering these overall costs, however, will be that merchants incentivize bitcoin use through discounts, something that Bitnet partner Rakuten recently did upon its bitcoin launch.
These discounts, Rambaud said, are likely to be an effective way to create what he called a “win-win” situation for merchants and consumers, even those who may currently believe the credit card rewards points are the most compelling offers.
Some good comments:
You don’t see other barrier ? Do you know what is volatility ?
“We’re completely bought into the idea that decentralized ledgers will play a significant role in business going forward,” Bagley said, adding that the company believes the technology could disrupt entire business verticals.
“There’s a huge opportunity to disrupt entire segments of the business ecosystem, particularly in cases where intermediaries introduce substantial frictional and transaction costs,” he continued.
Peernova: http://peernova.com/
He doesn’t believe that Bitcoin will be “the last man standing”, relative to fiat currency. Their infrastructures and influence are too vast to topple in a direct manner. Neither one of us see Bitcoin acting as a new global reserve currency. It wasn’t set up for such things. It should be a nice compliment to the current legacy systems, we agree. Just much more advanced and decentralized in nature.
Andreas doesn’t really pay any mind to the price of Bitcoin versus the dollar or fiat currencies, given its ability to be influenced by speculators. What interests him is the adoption by startups in the space and the technological advancements of the technology. The number of projects in Bitcoin on GitHub; the number of languages it can be used in. There is still plenty of room for growth, especially in the Third-world.
“When (oppressive monetary) laws are passed, giant chunks of the population are willing to work around these laws. The fact that a year after China effectively banned Bitcoin, and now 80% of Bitcoin is traded in Chinese Yuan, speaks a lot to the fact that Bitcoin will continue to operate, even if it is banned. In fact, the fact that it is banned serves to male it even more attractive (“The Streisand Effect”.)”
The next topic is altcoins, and I want to know if he’ll endorse any, own any, how into the altcoin space he is. He appreciates what they can offer as far as innovation, but does not hold much of any. He seems to like such programs where he can write contracts and scripts. Very experimental programs that give him some flexibility Bitcoin may not, in its current form. Describing altcoins, he used the term “one large ecosystem of innovation.”