[2016-09-22] This Blockchain Startup CEO Doesn’t Think Bitcoin is Going Away

"When Chain first launched in April of 2014, their first product was a Bitcoin API. “Developers were kind of rushing into the space saying, ‘We want to just figure this out and build interesting things,’” said Ludwin. “But there was no platform for them to do that. There was no Twilio. There was no Stripe. There was no developer-friendly way to get an app up, running, and connected to the Bitcoin network.”

According to Ludwin, roughly a third of all Bitcoin apps and services were built on top of Chain’s Bitcoin API just a few months later.

By August of that year, Nasdaq, Fidelity, and FirstData were knocking on Chain’s door to learn more about Bitcoin. Ludwin provided potential use cases of Bitcoin for each of those companies during their meetings, but those financial institutions were not hearing demands for Bitcoin-related services from their customers.

“The message I got back from those three meetings and subsequent meetings was always the same,” said Ludwin. “It was: ‘Can you please explain to us, one more time, how the heck you’re sending money from your phone to Wikipedia or back to your office in San Francisco?’”

“They couldn’t understand how this was happening . . . I needed to explain this in a way they could understand but also grok that there was something fundamentally new here,” Ludwin added.

Ludwin ended up describing Bitcoin as a solution to the double-spending problem, which is often declared to be its most vital feature. The financial entities responded by asking Chain to help them make securities trading, payments, and other asset transfers work in a manner similar to the movement of bitcoins on the Bitcoin blockchain. “That’s what really set us on the path to what we do now,” said Ludwin."

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