If bitcoin acceptance reaches a critical mass where necessities of food, shelter, and clothing can be bought with it, it will likely have reached a tipping point where it displaces national currencies. In this scenario,
many areas of the world would be leapfrogging banking infrastructure and traditional money wire transfers. Most notably this would describe the financial landscape in developing economies such as the nations of Africa.
BITCOIN LEAPFROGGING BANKS
Leapfrogging is described as a theory of economic development which
skips inferior or obsolete technologies in order to move directly to advanced ones. Take, for example, phone coverage in African countries. Landlines and grids for household use were never fully developed because, by the time Africa came into market view, mobile phones were the new paradigm of telecommunications and hence, the entire infrastructure for household landlines was leapfrogged by cellular technology. Similarly, bitcoin technology could leapfrog the banking infrastructure of western economies and go directly to a new financial paradigm and serve the needs of the vast number of the unbanked in these regions. All that would be required on behalf of the citizens is a mobile device with internet connectivity.
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