Banks Are Feeling The Crypto Threat

"Blockchain but not crypto."

That is the idea the banks had. Jamie Dimon was the poster child for that concept. It was the mantra out of the banks about a year ago.

Now, the threat is so severe, some of the banks are taking the "if you can't beat them, join them". Dimon's bank is going to be one of the first with its own currency. This is being built on a blockchain, jobs that the company is already advertising.

The banks are threatened at losing the cross border payments. Anyone who sent money internationally knows how expensive it can be. The banking system cleans up with the fees that it charges.


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Cryptocurrency is a major threat because it does not care where the money is going. A crypto transaction is a peer-to-peer payment from one wallet to the other. Geographic boundaries are meaningless.

The fees to send the transaction are also a fraction of the cost of the banking system. Even at its peak, when Bitcoin got up near $100 for a transaction, this is still peanuts compared to sending $50,000 internationally. The banking system charges a percentage of the total. Depending upon the country, this can be over 10%, especially in small amounts.

Facebook made a lot of noise with their proposed solution of the Libra. With over 1B users, there would be an instant user base to access. This is a major threat to the banking system.

We now see another entrant as Google announced its own payment system. While not going the cryptocurrency route, it seeks to exploit the existing user base that is already on its platforms.

Ultimately, all the centralization might end up sinking all these options. In the meantime, the behemoths will try to outdo each other. The banks, unfortunately for them, operated for so long with a monopoly, that they might have a tough time keeping up with the mega-tech companies.

In the end, my feeling is distribution is what is going to matter. Providing a platform through which people can transfer money or make payments is terrific if people have money. None of these options solves the issue for those who are feeling the effects of income inequality and a system that keeps pushing wealth into fewer hands.

I am personally very happy with what I am seeing in the cryptocurrency world and what is taking place. As time passes, the infrastructure for crypto improves. At the same time, I see a lot more problems arising for the existing system. This is going to keep taking a toll on the present institutions.

Altering systems that have powerful players and are well-established can take some time. The cryptocurrency world is still rather young. In fact, we still do not see the proper pieces in place to mount a serious challenge at what is operating. That is changing though.

As more people are exposed to the merits of cryptocurrency, we will see an increase in adoption. It is vital to remember the Internet did not take off overnight either. There were a number of years where adoption was rather slow. Ultimately, we saw the pace increase to where 200M now are joining every year.

Will we see the same with cryptocurrency? I cannot say for certain but it looks like the process will be very similar. If we can see a bit more ease of use in the development, adoption will increase at a faster pace.

All in due time though. This industry is not going away.


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Ya for sure banks are in Trouble. When the Celsius is Paying over 8% a year on my money why would I use a normal bank ever again. 8% on stable coins is the end of banks

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(Edited)

I'm thinking of getting rid of my merchant account after the holidays this year and strictly doing my software business in crypto. Adoption isn't overwhelming at this point, but I've had a few orders over the last 2+ years I've been accepting crypto.

The Unstoppable Domains technology makes it really easy to aggregate all the different payment addresses into a single hot wallet such as Coinomi using a single domain such as astrologysoftware.zil.

My biggest concern is the ossification of the bitcoin protocol into a store of value. Chain analytics and regulation have hampered crypto adoption in the US by making the tax reporting requirements onerous. By declaring bitcoin and others to be a stock with capital gains, they minimized the medium of exchange property.

There's a couple of ways this could go. One would be that mad adoption comes when the alts recover and the heavy numbers just make it too difficult for governments to keep up. Alternatively, the privacy focused currencies such as Monero which have privacy on by default cause a mass exodus from bitcoin and other transparent blockchains.

We're living in exciting and dangerous times. By 2030, the existing government structures will have either changed completely or will have collapsed.

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I am so done with the banking system and paying tax to a government just to pay debt incurred to feed rampant corruption and nothing else.

None of these options solves the issue for those who are feeling the effects of income inequality and a system that keeps pushing wealth into fewer hands.

This, and a few other things I won't go into, are why I am on Steemit. Steem has to be bigger and stronger than Steemit.

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I am just waiting for my crypto card to start moving money across the world using crypto... directly to banks... and from them to crypto. This is going to be huge!

I definitely feel banks are going to be outdated once this takes masses for markets of the common user. Can't wait!

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Fully agree. I personally think that blockchain technology and decentralization could potentially be a possibility to tackle income inequality. There are already some blockchain projects starting up in regard to Universal Base Income (UBI) ... would be interesting to hear your opinion in that regard.

BR, jkr88

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I find it great that you raise the point on people not having funds. I always listen to the discussion of banking the unbanked, but there is never any attempt on getting those people to generate wealth.

I do find some nice ways on Steem on generating and organizing content. It might be even a way to build literacy in a country. Bringing people to read more, a be critical on what they read. Might be still a bit utopic, but is a way.

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Lovely!!, thanks for this article... Yup cryptos are not going away anywhere...was so thrilled to imagine all you said, that banks are looking towards crypto, as crypto can be transactions cheaper way and yup, erode this system that serves the wealthy and not the poor. Croto world and era, we would have, and just add govt.'s going to change their ways of policy making and impletation for a less polluted world too, atleast some positive reformations are there for the world to happen, and dammit, this is damn exiciting. I love reading your pieces, this one did not adversise steem for a change though, but bang on with how crypto is a alternative for people who see the banks not keeping their wealth properly.

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This development is very much expected. I do think many banks are bracing up for their own digital cross border payments and transactions. It may be another version of crypto .Perhaps syndicated by as many banks as possible!!

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