Typically EU: let’s have a bitcoin taskforce!
A year ago, in march 2013, the US Department of the Treasury Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FINCEN) published a paper FIN-2013-G001 on crypto currency defacto regulating bitcoin in the US [...]
A year ago, in march 2013, the US Department of the Treasury Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FINCEN) published a paper FIN-2013-G001 on crypto currency defacto regulating bitcoin in the US [...]
The removal of the middle man function in an exchange based on the bitcoin protocol does not automatically lead to the disappearance of the companies (and their interests) performing these today. The middle man function will slowly but surely erode with the advent of the bitcoin protocol, the middle man of today (parties) will be the gate(way)keepers of tomorrow.
Many years ago in a contribution to a corporate strategy I postulated payments should be redefined to the “transfer of property rights”. At that time smart metering for utilities and [...]
Our societies and economies are impacted heavily by technological change, they always have been. While some technologies - like the bitcoin protocol - allow for smaller economic actors to be relatively more economically viable then before other developments go in different directions.
Question of the day (III) Let’s be honest; if a long time senior payments professional asks the title question after you have spend an hour explaining the significance of the [...]
Looking at a wallet based payment chain (P2P) the central pivot point is the wallet itself. The wallet needs to have the values available either in the wallet or immediately on call by a service provider. Euro’s – or any other currency for that matter – could be provided by a gateway provided per bank based on the PAAS conception.
The acceptance of Bitcoin protocol currencies and Ripple like networks is dependent on trust even if trust is said not to be necessary for the value to be transferred between two actors. Neglecting this will hamper adoption of the Bitcoin protocol by the masses.
(1 minute reading time + 15+ minutes external article) As with Marc Andreessen's article "Why bitcoin matters" from three weeks ago I can recommend an other landmark article on crypto [...]
(Utopia Wallet Part III) (3 minutes reading time) In part II of this miniseries on Electronic Wallets I promised to have a look at the contours of the Ultimate “Electronic [...]
Often antitrust is connected to behaviour in the disadvantage of competitors – and hence the dis-economies this brings for consumers – we should have a wider perspective at the (potential) negative impact companies have on society. Slowly but surely we should start looking at the disadvantages to society’s ability to collaborate as well.
(2 minutes reading time) Since having spend some early years of my professional life in a technical wholesale company I have been following the incredible developments of Amazon with great [...]
A long time friend who had just returned from a business trip to the USA to discuss various business development opportunities on two sides of the big point. He was wondering why certain types of innovation are typically initiated in the USA and not in the EU (or ROW). He pointed at PayPal as an example. I think I understand where his question is coming from and at first glance would agree to the gut feel expressed with this question that the conditions in the EU for innovation especially in payments are less favourable. But once you start thinking about it various inroads are possible:
(3 minutes reading time) When electronic wallets are discussed between people within the payments industry there always seems to be one big white elephant in the room: Apple. Intuitively many [...]
(1 minute reading time + 1 minute video) The outline of the Utopia Wallet aims to solve payment fragmentation both for Payers as for Payees. Coin has introduced a card [...]
(4 minutes reading time) Picking up the glove I threw in front of myself in my previous post on Clinkle to describe “the contours of the ultimate payment method” I [...]
Sometimes you are made aware of an article very worthwhile (Thank you Henk!). Marc Andreessen (from Andreessen Horowitz) has written a pretty balanced and informative piece on Bitcoin (BTC) via [...]
(4 minutes reading time) Basically we only know a few things about Clinkle. Firstly it is a payments start-up based in San-Francisco promising “something that’s fundamentally different from everything else [...]
(3 min. read) Yesterdays post dealt with MintChip, the new Canadian digital currency based on a secure element on a chip to make payments. The novelty of this scheme is [...]
(4 min. read) FinExtra today covers the introduction of the MintChip in Canada: “Royal Canadian Mint demos digital currency.” Questions arise: why are we talking currency here? what is “digital [...]
(2 min. read) The inevitable finally happened: the deadline for SEPA for Euro countries to introduce SEPA Credit Transfers and SEPA Direct Debit will be postponed with 6 months. You [...]
As everybody else living on the web I have received phishing mails for years and years. Not very many, they seem to come in waves. Initially these mails were so [...]
My bitcoin wallet address Earlier this year I bought a fraction of a bitcoin. Getting a bitcoin wallet app (Blockchain) was easy enough. Getting it loaded with bitcoin [...]
A condensed version of a blog post here at RPD is published yesterday by PaymentEye.com: "Half-baked interoperability is not enough; next steps needed for SEPA CSM interoperability.". You can download [...]
Wikipedia: “Interoperability is the ability of diverse systems and organizations to work together (inter-operate). While the term was initially defined for information technology or systems engineering services to allow for [...]
In a side line of this Mondays post on the way governments will enforce their interest - while hopefully representing us citizens for the better - in this interconneceted epoque: [...]