Opening up the financial system
I started the day at Café Olympico with my friends François (we play music together) and Francis (we work together) and the conversation eventually shifted to cryptocurrencies, as they usually do when I've had too much coffee.
There's so much material to read regarding the (recent/upcoming, depends on you see things) opening of our financial system. See how I avoided the words 'Bitcoin' and 'Cryptocurrencies', this post is about that, exactly.
If you have some time and are ready to dive in, I suggest the following 3 article. The authors are 3 thought leaders in the space and they offer different perspectives.
1. A Letter to Jamie Dimon
“Cryptocurrencies are a new asset class that enable decentralized applications. Don’t have an opinion on decentralized applications? Then you can’t possibly have one on cryptocurrencies yet, so read on.”
“Firms have played an important role in society for decades for these reasons. Despite their prominence, most people dislike them. Bitcoin is the first example of an organizational structure that has the beneficial characteristics of the firm combined with some new characteristics”
“Our mission is to create an open financial system for the world. We believe that open protocols for money will create more innovation, economic freedom, and equality of opportunity in the world, just like the internet did for publishing information.”
Edit: I'm adding this in-depth article by Preston Byrne as a balance of the sheer optimism displayed in these 3 articles. A good strategist must consider both sides of a story.
4. The Bear Case for Crypto
“Cutting to the chase, the reason the ICO and Bitcoin markets are booming the way they are is because regulators in the major jurisdictions for transacting financial business have, for four or five years, more or less entirely abdicated responsibility for enforcing the laws if the word “blockchain” is involved.”