As two neo-money industries are revving up: can fintech and blockchain co-exist?
Written by Sheldon Dearr from Octopus Network
The short answer is yes. You see it already: fintech products cover multiple countries’ users and commerce. Those same users have access to cryptocurrencies and other assets too, sometimes in the same platforms.
The long answer is no, different financial/monetary technologies cannot survive each other as independent niches in the same industry. Both fintech and so-called “cryptocurrencies” are being integrated more carefully into law; outside classifications like asset, property, or even currency, all have a similar impact in amplifying the user experience. Nearly all fintech, crypto and unclassified assets fit under policies of [a users’] local jurisdictions, or at least a country where they reside. There’s nuance here: blockchains aren’t necessary financial systems, though we deservedly start with Bitcoin, the first public monetary network. It’s reasonable [typically required] to balance financial incentives in public blockchains, and for a time it was the only lens we knew. Today we see Google, Amazon, and Microsoft partnering with different “crypto” technologies, so we should acknowledge some familiarity with their software components.
Status quo: proximity to the state
Localized compliance and modern definitions of digital/network jurisdiction are the antithesis of cryptocurrencies. Many operations are completed without IP address or regional data on record, or at least not easily captured and understood. As a citizen in a country, I’m a physical entity, and I need to eat: a country where I was born can expect that eventually, odds are I will need to transact to survive. On the other hand, open-source software is still rife with asymmetric problems, and there’s no immediate solution on the horizon. Open-source software is touted highly in crypto, but the challenges that come with it are rarely so appreciated. In private [traditional] business environments, “open-source” is rarely lauded in the same light; it’s a tenured respect. Building something unique and giving it away results in unreasonably inequitable relationships, like the classic xkcd meme below. No attempt to reasonably resolve this has been successful, yet.