Is Rhode Island ready for Bitcoin? Two perspectives
ROBERT CUSACK (@RECusack) | Portfolio Manager, WhaleRock Point Partners, Providence
Foreign currency traders and other financial community pros have always seen the real potential of Bitcoin and other virtual currencies as a disrupter of the control the big banks have on the payments system. JP Morgan’s CEO’s recent derogatory comments about Bitcoin [he called them a “terrible store of value” and added “a lot of it is being used for illicit purposes”] reveal the threat is being taken seriously.
Many are fascinated by the speed, anonymity, and low cost of moving money via Bitcoin, but the weakness has always been the interface, the “exchanges” where users must register and convert their own money into and out of Bitcoin. Today’s [February 10] free-fall in the value of bitcoins themselves in reaction to a large exchange freezing withdrawals shows this weakness. The potential for hacking at the exchange level is another question.
JON BITTNER (@jonbittner) | Co-founder and CEO, Splitwise (a “split expenses with friends” service/app), Providence
Bitcoin is a huge new development in the history of the Internet. And most of the great ideas about Bitcoin and the way that Bitcoin will change the Internet have not even been discovered yet. Obviously, it’s mostly right now by the media thought of as a currency, because that’s what the regulators are worried about and people are buying it hoping to get rich. So it’s a speculator market, like penny stocks (except now it’s expensive) and it’s drawn all kinds of monetary interest. But I think that, from a technologist’s point of view, Bitcoin is really about distributed trust and having a distributed leger that’s publicly verifiable.
Much like the Internet itself opened up the economy to anyone sitting anywhere, by allowing them to start a website, work remotely over the Internet, sell things online, that sort of thing — Bitcoin takes that even further and allows you to transfer money anywhere in the country without having to even deal with financial services. Bitcoin could help Rhode Island . . . [in] a few different ways. If we become leaders in Bitcoin, which might not look super likely, [but] it’s certainly possible with our universities, and if any interesting Bitcoin projects spring up here, that will be amazing for the economy.
Let’s say that you are an artist — and Providence has lots of wonderful artists — and you come up with some sort of strange piece of performance art. Bitcoin-based donations are a lot easier to deal with than PayPal or something. So I think a tech-savvy artist might find a way to make a lot of money by doing Bitcoin-based donations.
If you’re a technically-minded person interested in Bitcoin, it’s like the Wild West right now. It’s so exciting. And shouldn’t be all band together to think about how we can make a beautiful, pretty future? It’s what all technologists want to do.
Bittner will host the second “Providence Bitcoin/Altcoin Meetup” at Founders League (4th floor, 95 Chestnut St.) on February 17 at 5:30 pm. More info at meetup.com/Providence-Bitcoin-Altcoin-Meetup.
_Philip Eil
