What is the essence of a zero-sum game? Wikipedia: A zero-sum game is a mathematical representation of a situation in which each participant's gain or loss of utility is exactly [...]
While traveling to Copenhagen yesterday I was presented by the POS-terminals the option to pay my taxis and restaurant bill at the airport in the locale Danish Krona or in [...]
Mintchip and cryptocurrcies urge us to better understand how money and payments relate. We have taken both for granted as separate topics; but they are like two sides of the same coin. Mintchip can provided useful insights in existing payment practices.
By clicking a link in a interesting article by Techcrunch I stumbled upon "Our Comrade The Electron" - Webstock Conference Talk by Maciej Ceglowski. Excellent presentation, intriguing narrative and great observations on our relation with technology.
Walking to the office this morning it struck me that the evolution of (physical) currency in relation to payments could show us the long term development of digital money as well: step by step the currency has been developing until at a certain moment in time the transaction will be done directly between the payer and the payee.
...you could miss the major contribution of bitcoin as it presses us to reassess the way we have been doing things for years where all those little and some bigger inconveniences build into the current payment industry have to be discussed again and seen for the real merit they have.
Once in a while I listen to Daring Fireballs' podcast The Talk Show by John Gruber. Walking to my office today I started to listen to episode #74, I kept [...]
„Is our political system capable of managing rapid technological change?” When pressed I would be tempted to answer the question with a resounding YES! for I see abundant evidence around me we have done so very successfully. Actually it is one of the core abilities we humans have to adapt to changing conditions.
Whether you think in terms of “ the creation of a world of plenty” or “the disappearance of the middle class” in both scenarios the distribution of the wealth available will have to be dealt with politically.
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 [...]
(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 [...]
(3 min. read) The oldest post on Red Planet Dust is dated Februari 6, 2013. This post will constitute the 125th in a very divers row, just 3 weeks shy [...]
(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 [...]
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 [...]
