Wednesday, January 22, 2014

BitCoin vs PayPal: a 100X+ difference

Both BitCoin and PayPal allow parties who don't trust each other's identity to exchange money electronically. The big difference is transaction costs. Because PayPal uses the existing system for electronic payments, it extracts high fees from the seller; the smaller the transaction, the larger the percentage of the fee. In short, PayPal doesn't scale down.


In contrast, BitCoin transactions are almost free. Moreover, they scale down as computing power (thanks to the Moore's law) becomes cheaper over time. The adoption of BitCoin or any similar monetary transaction system should stimulate development of businesses that involve high-volume payments. If posting on Twitter is free, BitCoin transactions should also be free.

Companies that will make Bitcoin payments reliable and secure are going to reap huge benefits in the mobile and financial markets.

tags: money, deontic, payload, control, machine1, machine2, finance, commerce, 10x, innovation

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