David Birch is a consultant on online payments from the old guard. He does like bitcoin and appreciate its goals, however he is a skeptic. During his talk, he explains why from his point of view, bitcoin will not take over because it is not hitting the current trends in the markets.
He explains that the current belief in the online payments sector is the growing power of the mobile phone where bitcoin does not hold up as strong as conventional systems.
The talk was highly contentious among attendees, but we are glad to have had David representing the other side of the game. Talks like this can only sharpen bitcoin to spearhead change in online payments.
Thanks Amir. And thanks again for the invitation to an interesting event. Perhaps I can return the favour – drop me an e-mail as I’d like to send you a couple of invitations to London events.
mastercard was dead wrong some 16 years ago. the guy is not getting the idea of decentralised currency he’s just funny. it shows how far behind all those banking system geegs are. a good sign for btc of course;)
LOL
All those currencies he listed were based on fiat currency, a point he never touches upon once in his talk.
The thing is, most people don’t actually care about whether or not a currency is decentralized or whether or not it’s a fiat currency or whatever. They care about being able to quickly and easily buy something without a lot of fuss when they have a pocket full of the stuff.
You might care, and I might care. But the average person does not, and no amount of beating it into their head will make them care very much.
If you can make bitcoin more convenient for the average person with a pocket full of them, then they’ll jump to it in a heartbeat.
And I don’t think people are ‘wrong’ or ‘sheep’ for being this way. There are a million things to care and be deeply passionate about in this world, and a limited amount of energy for any given person to spend. You can’t expect them to care deeply about the things you care deeply about. The best you can hope for is a dim realization that maybe there’s some sort of problem there and they might consider doing something slightly inconvenient in order to deal with it.
Do you think it’s that lack of care that helped us all get into the position we are in today, and does Bitcoin mitigate this problem by removing the need for trust?
It may be less convient to get downloads via Bittorrent but millions still do, even governments can’t stop that. People who may have the same difficulty obtaining wealth might just be willing to put up with a little inconvenience to prevent the same governments and their crony businesses from taking it all away. It’s easy to make Bitcoin easy and this next year will show that.
An idea of a Decentralized Monetary System, is ideal..but what is it Really Worth? Unless Bitcoins can be Traded, for say Gold/Silver, then is it not like other currencies? How will Bitcoin redfine itself from other Fiats?
IMHO the people do care whether it is a fiat currency or not what they keep in their wallets. they start to wake up!
Actually I have traded all my bitcoins for silver. You can get gold too. And about a million other products. I just prefer silver.
Bitcoin is good for microtransactions, where credit card or paypal fees would be excessive. It is also good for international transactions, which tend to have high fees. And the highest fees of all are taxes on your earnings. Those are the kinds of areas where people will find enough use for them to support it as a currency, because it has an advantage over the alternatives.