Cryptocurrency

Crypto is the Future of Finance: Here’s What Businesses Need to Know to Adapt & Adopt

The Future of Crypto

Sam and Peter are two well-established business owners. Like many other entrepreneurs, they frequently struggle with fear of underachieving, maintaining an appropriate level of inventory, and challenges with payroll and suppliers. Both had heard about bitcoin and the innovation it brought to day-to-day business transactions. While Peter believed that fiat currency represented a stable future for his business, Sam viewed fiat as a limited path to success.

Sam envisioned a future with unlimited success by accepting payment in cryptocurrency. He speculated that it would be just a matter of time before the adoption of crypto became a forgone conclusion for the future of finance.  With that eventually realized, the success he brought to his business established him as a thought leader in crypto adoption. The world has seen a few Sams but a lot more Peters. Which one are you? 

As a Sam, you’re better prepared for the shift in cyber-enabled global commerce. Based on the crowdsourced statistics of coinmap.org, 27,923 businesses use cryptocurrency. MasterCard added cryptocurrency onto its network by collaborating with Wirex and BitPay to create crypto cards that allow people to make payments using crypto, building on the fact that cryptocurrency’s existence is too significant to ignore. 

In April, Tesla sold 10% of its bitcoin holdings. Elon Musk clarified that the purpose of that action was to conduct an experiment with the liquidity of bitcoin. He tweeted, “Tesla sold 10% of its holdings essentially to prove liquidity of bitcoin as an alternative to holding cash on balance sheet.” Is cryptocurrency going to replace gold as a digital reserve and hedge against inflation?

Visa has been working closely with licensed and regulated digital currency platforms like Coinbase and declared partnerships with 50 of the leading crypto platforms on card programs that make it easy to convert and spend digital currency at 70 million merchants worldwide.

Is cryptocurrency going to replace fiat currency?

Blockchain Intelligence Group

Michael Fasanello, J.D.
Director of Training and Regulatory Affairs, Blockchain Intelligence Group.

Blockchain Intelligence Group is solving the cryptocurrency legitimacy problem for the digital era. There is a jigsaw puzzle of initiatives around the world to regulate the use of cryptocurrencies, and it may be some time before a global regulatory approach falls into alignment. 

With that in mind, it is still notable that crypto not only exposes flaws in the fiat currency system but also offers a variety of remedies. Those flaws were a major catalyst for the popularity of cryptocurrency evolving into a trend. As we’ve seen earlier, Mastercard identified and acknowledged this trend with the surge of bitcoin value, by adopting cutting-edge solutions. The multinational financial institution labelled the attraction to cryptocurrency “unmistakable.

Cost: Globally, the average cost per international transaction is nearly 7%, and up to 10.5% in Japan, according to the World Bank. Based on analyses performed by the bank, US $421 billion worth of transactions was carried out in 2020, resulting in over US $29 billion in transfer fees. In most cryptocurrencies, these sacrifices are marginal. You keep nearly the full value of your asset in every transaction, regardless of the distance between sender and receiver, let alone the secure custody of those assets, for a nominal transaction fee.

Flexibility: The limitations on transaction size are negligeable with crypto; there’s almost no “minimum amount” per transfer, thanks to the fact that crypto can be divided into fractions as tiny as 100 millionths of a coin. 

Globality: Fiat currency can be valueless outside the borders of the country it belongs to. Popular cryptocurrencies like bitcoin speak a universal language when it comes to payment. 

Control: You are in full control of every deal. If you and the counterparty agree, no extra approvals are required, thanks to the decentralized nature of crypto.  There is no middleman to usurp value for little to no added benefit to the transaction. There is no centralized arbiter of your business to which you must submit.  You close the deals you want, when you want, with whom you want, and receive nearly real-time settlement. The kicker is that with crypto, there are no hassles with illegitimate “charge-backs” as transactions are irreversible.

Authenticity: According to the United States Department of Treasury, an estimated US $70 million in counterfeit bills are in circulation. Cryptocurrency eliminates this thanks to its foundational use of immutable and public-facing distributed ledger technology, or blockchain.

Aside from becoming part of an exclusive business network, with cryptocurrency being the membership card, businesses that adopt and invest in crypto reduce upkeep costs and trading fees and eliminate the risk of counterfeits and reversible transactions. Moreover, employees gain familiarity and comfort with crypto and therefore are better prepared for the future when crypto becomes the “new norm,” building a capable and scalable environment for success and resilience. In a world full of Peters, one should consider the many benefits of thinking like Sam.

Written By: Michael Fasanello, J.D.

Director of Training and Regulatory Affairs, Blockchain Intelligence Group.

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