Does the FinTech Industry Really Need a Decentralized Currency?

| Updated
by Eugenia Romanenko · 2 min read
Does the FinTech Industry Really Need a Decentralized Currency?
Photo: po1206/Flickr

The fast-paced financial technology industry is becoming very promising nowadays. But, centralized money keep causing crises. Is decentralized currency going to solve them?

The world observes the FinTech industry developing really fast and becoming quite popular today. Lots of major banks and financial services companies are facilitating the development of startups and their technology in the FinTech space, but the issue related to the currency and its decentralization is still open.

It’s obvious that not only banks are able to control personal finances of thousands of people restricting their clients and dictating how to use the funds. Private bitcoin firms do pretty much the same. They are likely to control over funds and information of their customers as well. Actually, the two so different ‘custodians’ of our money have one thing in common. They both supervise and manipulate the money their customers ask them to keep and make safe.

Fortunately, the fintech space offers various solutions, and some of them are really promising. It’s necessary to mention the truly decentralized bitcoin wallet companies which don’t even retain their customers’ email addresses. Well, probably such firms know everything about decentralized currency.

Airbitz  is a vivid example of that kind of bitcoin wallet. It is an easy to use, decentralized, open source, secure digital wallet available for iOS and Android. Moreover, this wallet won first place in the start-up competition this year in New York City at the Inside Bitcoins Conference.

“Bitcoin needs to be at the front of the ongoing movement to establish merchant directories and creating group consensus on credibility. The hive mentality is central to bitcoin’s success. The central premise of bitcoin is that your money can exist totally independent of centralized controls. Many bitcoin users do not even know that their funds are subject to controls — not by a government per se, but by bitcoin banks,” says Paul Puey, Airbitz’s founder and CEO.

Known for its easy-to-use design, Airbitz integrates a detailed Bitcoin merchant directory, so mobile users can locate a store and spend Bitcoins on the same application. Well, it’s easy to understand that Airbitz’s decentralized infrastructure has made it one of the most popular Bitcoin wallets on the market.

“It is our responsibility to shift the norm away from business-as-usual and back towards the original purpose of bitcoin,” adds Paul Puey.

We can’t help but say that the community needs to take seriously the importance of decentralized currency. Moreover, it’s essential for customers to know the ways network works and what decentralization actually is.

FinTech News, News
Related Articles