I had a first hand experience this weekend as to why the world of money is ripe for disruptive innovation. It involves transmitting money between multiple parties under a constricted timeframe, in an outdated banking system, between people in different geographical locations. It’s a prime example of why the world will embrace bitcoin.

At a high level, here is the situation. Person A owes Person B $200 and due a unique set of circumstances Person C (me) is charged with sending the $200 to Person A through an intermediary we both know…let’s call that party Person D. Obviously the most efficient way to execute the repayment would be for A to pay B directly, but as we all know stuff happens and things change in this beautiful thing called life.

So here I am, needing to send money to D. Knowing this person I ask the shot in the dark question – “Do you know what bitcoin is?”. Not surprisingly D did not know enough about bitcoin or trust it to use it as a payment medium to B. Unphased I log on to my banking website and select the money transmission service my banks utilizes to send the cash….and what do I find?

  • There is a fee
  • It will take several days
  • Personal information (name, email address, & phone number) is required
  • Domestic transactions only (didn’t matter in this case, but still annoying)
Long story short, I send the money. B & D aren’t very happy because by the time the money gets to B it will be about a week due to the banking transmission delays. While this may seem like a minor inconvenience, I took this as an opportunity to educate all parties as to the basic merits of bitcoin.
  • Virtually no fees
  • Instant transactions
  • No personal information required
  • Borderless value transmission
Needless to say we all agreed to use bitcoin next time this happens. There was a lot of “Oh, I had no idea” sentiment afterwards, nonetheless, the seed has been planted. Why do we use this antiquated banking system? With the technological advances in the world today, why has innovation lacked in the most important world of all (money)?

Little by little the innovative change will sweep the populace due situations just like the one I described above. Now if only I didn’t have to wait to be paid back for 3 days due to PayPal delays…