Topic: 2012-12-09 TheNextWeb.com - The future of money: New paradigms for the checkout, (Read 1574 times)

There’s another kind of player in this new game, too. It’s one that has been greeted with the most skepticism and yet has the most potential for complete and utter disruption – cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin.
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Bitcoin improves on the old model for currency in many ways. Maybe it’s the prototype for whatever improved implementation overtakes traditional currency in the future, or maybe Bitcoin will take that throne, but it seems likely that our current model will be replaced, whether today’s governments come to allow it, or we have to wait for them to fade out – or be thrown out – of existence.
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"What these technologies will unleash will be profound. Money can move instantly, anywhere and without restriction. A digital payment can move between two people as they pass each other on the street, or between two people on opposite sides of the Earth – with no difference between the character of the two payments,” says Erik Voorhees, who is a Bitcoin entrepreneur who works at BitInstant.
“Money will move in this direction – toward these enabling technologies – because it tends to follow the path of least resistance. New rails have been built, and it’s just a matter of building the infrastructure around them and the trains will start switching, unavoidably.”
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“The technologies recently built enable significant new powers – but we don’t know whether these new powers will be seized by individuals or by their governments,” says Voorhees.
His final word is cautious for an area with so much untapped potential. “More important than asking “what’s next” is asking, “who gets to give the answer?”