This came to me in a dream last night..
Crypto enthusiasts are likely, in my experience, to see cryptocurrency as alternatives to the banking system.
As we know here in the forum (but the rest of the world doesn't, see
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,16399.0.html), BitShares is probably the best bet to preserve crypto wealth. BTC and the others are just too volatile.
I wouldn't be confortable storing my life saving in Bitcoin because of that. But in a mixture of BitAssets? Don't see why not (when we get past 1.0 though
).
Now, one thing led to another and I was asking myself before falling asleep.. but what about normal users, people who are not in this to be shareholders, people who just want to do their shopping online and what not. Surely BitUSD is a better choice for that than BTC, but BTC having first mover advantage.. it's not going to be easy to displace.
At this point remember one of the unique feats of BitShares.. it allows for storing wealth in BitAssets.
And here is what came to me in the dream.. what if instead of aligning ourselves against evil greedy banks in the good fight against tyranny (tm).. what if we
integrate bitshares with the banking system?
Preposterous, you say! Allow me to further explain.
Keep in mind this is geared for normal users, chances are you or me wouldn't do it like this. Because we prefer having the control over our wealth. Because we prefer the increased privacy that BitShares+TITAN can provide.
Realize though that for most people these are not true. It's probably only a matter of time until Jane Doe loses all her funds due to not having a backup or the wallet, or if this thing takes off, you can bet that there will be many a malware waiting behind that click to penetrate your BTS like Sansa Stark couldn't even imagine.
So, say Jane has an account at HSBC. She wants to send some money to her daughter who happens to be studying in Kenya!
At the present moment her options are basically a wire transfer (fees) or Western Union (moar fees). [Yes, BTC would work; if it's cashed out quickly the wealth should be preserved.. but how many Janes have you seen using BTC lately?]
What if BitAssets were
integrated into Jane's bank system, and she could simply do a "BitShares transfer" from the online banking page ?
Let us say this is a transfer made in USD. Jane has no BitUSD, but she has USD.
So Jane goes online, sends 2000 USD to her daughter who is in Kenya, and selects "Use the BTS Network (TM) for this transfer".
Instead of outrageous fees and waiting for a few days, there are no fees (though banks being banks, they will probably still charge a very small fee), and it is instant.
The USD gets deducted from her account, the bank sends BitUSD to the bank in Kenya with a memo identifying her daughters' account, and instantly the daughter gets the money (the BitUSD are converted to USD as needed).
For a non-technical person who already has a bank account, this has several advantages:
- 0 setup time.
- Not giving personal data to yet another company.
- None/low fees, instant transfers, vs lots of fees and waiting for days.
The Bank wins something here as well since they are likely to charge a small fee for processing it through BitShares. Fine, Jane thinks. Better pay $5 than $50.
BitShares sees widespread adoption and shareholders are happy (and for some reason all smoking lots of cuban cigars).
Now I'm not saying it would be easy to have the banks integrate their systems with the BitShares network... but I am saying that with focused effort it could be possible.
What do you think? Pipe dream? Any angle I missed ? (It was only a dream, after all
)
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