Welcome to the Internet of Value !
“Bitcoin introduces a platform on which you can run currency as an application on a network without any central points of control. A system completely decentralized like the internet itself. It is not money for the internet but the internet of money.”
Andreas Antonopoulos
In the same way as the Internet redefined global communication, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are now reinventing money and value transactions.
Before Bitcoin, money was defined by State sovereignty over a territory. From now on, any community can mint its own money in form of a cryptocurrency or digital token and start trading without any central supervising authority.
In 2017 alone, Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) raised around $5 billion. Each project was financed by a community of token holders who became its ambassadors. There are now already tens of millions of token holders.
Bitcoins and digital tokens are like better, smarter cash. They are programmable money. Immediately liquid, indefinitely divisible, and instantly transferable, they can be programmed to meet the needs of particular assets, rights, goods, or services or of specific communities.
In the coming years, we will see a multitude of cryptocurrencies being deployed. New cryptographic developments and payment applications will allow us to transact in all these currencies, with the traditional “fiat” currencies retaining their role as price anchors/index currencies.
Exchanges as key components of the Internet of Value
Exchanges will be the marketplaces where cryptocurrencies will be traded against each other and with fiat currencies. Cryptocurrency exchanges will form the bridges between blockchains powered by Bitcoin, Ether and other cryptographic protocols.
We confidently expect the Internet of Value to gain mass adoption, just as the free peer-to-peer networks that preceded it on the Internet, namely email and the Web, did.
The Internet of Value will trigger new waves of innovation in financial systems and beyond. It will bring financial inclusion to the billions of people who are still unbanked today.
Pierre Noizat, CEO of Paymium and Blockchain.io
