CryptoCurrencyWire
Editorial Coverage: There is a massive, underserved target
market out there for cryptocurrency – a market succinctly
delineated by World Bank statistics that indicate 2 billion or more
people worldwide are unbanked, as well as by FDIC data that shows
more than 23 million Americans are either unbanked or underbanked.
Such data illustrates how cryptocurrency is poised to potentially
disrupt the digital payments landscape by ensuring an alternative
to traditional banking; and, of course, all merchants are eager to
avoid transaction fees regardless of where they do business in the
world, which is a primary driver of ongoing growth in merchant
acceptance. The underlying potential and increasing acceptance of
cryptocurrencies has sent many different kinds of demographics
racing to find the “Bitcoin 2.0” killer coin. Contenders such as
the community-centric SmartCash (Crypto: SMART) (SMART
Profile), with its self-replenishing SmartHive Project
Treasury and ongoing innovation, are gaining more attention. Major
market players in the crypto-asset movement like payment-focused
Square, Inc. (NYSE: SQ), PayPal Holdings,
Inc. (NASDAQ: PYPL) and Visa, Inc. (NYSE:
V) are becoming increasingly aware of such attractive
crypto-assets as SmartCash, and blockchain-focused juggernauts such
as International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:
IBM) are lining up as well.
Crypto Can Serve as Superior Substitute for Outdated
Payment Systems
Even before scalability issues in the Bitcoin (Crypto: BTC)
blockchain are resolved (a situation that would help put BTC more
center stage when it comes to consumer choice for buying everyday
goods and services), the benefits of crypto for tasks such as value
transfer are becoming increasingly apparent. Because crypto-assets
leverage the power of blockchain technology to clear and quickly
settle transfers without the need for an intermediary,
comparatively antiquated banking networks are beginning to look
like dinosaurs; particularly when it comes to cross-border
payments. IMF Monetary and Capital Markets Department Deputy
Director Dong He even recently asserted that the increasing
prominence of crypto-assets stands to reduce demand for the fiat
currencies issued by central banks themselves (http://www.ccw.fm/VAE1u).
True Innovators are the Long-term Darlings
The ever-growing interest among merchants to adopt immediate
settlement-capable cryptocurrency tech that is also universal,
decentralized and fraud-resistant is exciting news. It’s notable to
mention that the addition of direct buying and selling of bitcoins
in Square’s wildly popular Cash App has played a part in doubling
the rate of downloads (http://www.ccw.fm/4vWMs). Needless to say, it is
easily understandable why retailers across multiple industries
would be pushing Square to accept bitcoins for transactions
considering the benefits of using crypto instead of payment systems
like credit cards.
European cryptocurrency payment gateway Coingate recently
partnered with opensource ecommerce developer Prestashop, enabling
80,000 new merchants across Europe to accept crypto payments
(http://www.ccw.fm/3Az2V). Merchant services provider
BitPay’s CEO Stephen Pair recently touted the $40 million secured
in a Series B round to expand services in Asia, where merchant
adoption appears to be accelerating handily (http://www.ccw.fm/P8Heo). South Korean internet
giant Kakao, which runs major cryptocurrency exchange UpBit, also
recently announced crypto integration, opening payment acceptance
to 12,000 merchants and 3 million-plus registered KakaoPay users
(http://www.ccw.fm/hV75l).
SmartCash is Holding the “SmartCard”
Increasing the merchant adoption rate is one area where
SmartCash (Crypto:
SMART) really shines with a host of innovative
features. A growing network of SmartNode servers, currently
totaling more than 12,000, will enable SmartCash’s soon-to-be
released feature InstantPay for real-time transactions (Bitcoin
often takes 10 minutes or more). Achieving such a large,
decentralized network of servers as this is a direct result of a
significantly more community-focused approach by the SmartCash
project. Notably, 70 percent of mined block rewards are set aside
to help fund projects submitted by community members and bolster
the SmartHive teams who maintain and promote the network.
SmartNodes help to future-proof the SmartCash project as well, due
to their inherent ability to add new services and bypass the kinds
of performance and scalability issues that have plagued Bitcoin.
Just last year there were many troubling reports of transactions
that went dormant for days on end as a severe backlog left
transactions unconfirmed and users furious.
A key element for merchant adoption of crypto is consumer
confidence and receptivity to usage, because merchants want their
customers to feel satisfied. SmartCash offers such user-friendly
features as username-based addresses that make it easy to make any
sort of transaction, including tipping and donating. Custom
username-based addresses also do away with the complex and worrying
addresses like those used by BTC, which often leave customers
biting their nails at transaction time, wondering if they correctly
entered the lengthy alphanumeric code and sent crypto to the
correct party.
Feature-Rich, Community-Powered
SmartCash also offers handy features like send-to-email that
lets anyone with an email address receive SMART coins, even if they
don’t have a wallet, making it very easy for experienced users to
send payment to new users who have no experience with
cryptocurrencies. SmartCash’s SmartRewards program also grants a
reward to holders of 1,000 SMART or more in a wallet at a set time
every month – a measure that was implemented to help reduce price
volatility by reducing the amount of coins constantly traded,
characteristically benefiting the whole community. Additionally,
because transaction fees are less than a tenth of a penny ($0.001),
SmartCash is very attractive to both merchants and buyers (http://www.ccw.fm/13WmG).
To further facilitate merchant adoption, the SmartCash project
will release a physical card-ready platform called the SmartCard
within several weeks that will work similarly to the way the
company’s already-available SmartBand does today. The card format
is familiar to consumers and allows them to skip taking out their
phone to load up an app. In fact, no Internet connection is needed
at all by the consumer, which means never having to worry about
dead batteries or lack of signal in remote areas. SmartCard will
also be usable in places where traditional banking services are
only partially available, or even absent entirely. With SmartBand
already accepted by some 2.5 million merchants in Brazil and an
estimated 726 billion digital payments to be facilitated per year
by payments processors of all types by 2020 (according to a recent
study by Capgemini and BNP Paribas), the SmartCard system stands
ready to gobble up significant market share.
Uniquely Future-Proofed
SmartCash is a truly unique crypto project because of the heavy
emphasis on being community-driven. This is a serious departure
from most other cryptos and the individual SMART holders get to
have a real voice. Furthermore, the self-funded SmartHive Project
Treasury and accessibility of block mining to standard PCs means
that anyone can support the network. The SmartHive governance
portal approach does away with the traditional hierarchy and
inefficiencies of a company structure and represents a management
structure as distributed and decentralized as blockchain technology
itself.
SmartCash seems to scratch all the right places where the
digital payments market is ripest for disruption. And while some
players have made noises about moving away from crypto altogether,
focusing instead on enterprise-scale blockchain tech and standard
fiat currencies to handle things like cross-border payments, the
use of innovative crypto like SmartCash or Stellar’s Lumens
(Crypto: XLM) could change all that. The payment-focused players
could also be swayed by such rich feature sets, moving away from
Bitcoin and into next-generation cryptos that threaten to become
“Bitcoin killers” by offering a bevy of procedural advantages.
Square, Inc. (NYSE: SQ) has seen its share
price soar by some 60 percent since the merchant services
aggregator’s announcement about allowing bitcoins to be purchased
via the Cash App (http://www.ccw.fm/Vq4Wm). And, notably, a recent
Nomura (NYSE: NMR) survey reveals 60 percent of business owners
using Square’s technology for rapid payment via smartphone would
accept bitcoin as a form of payment (http://www.ccw.fm/3aUAm). Dan Dolev, a top
analyst at Nomura’s independent equity trading arm, Instinet, put a
$64 price target on Square this March, due in large part to the
strength of the company’s crypto adoption. However, many analysts
grow increasingly concerned about Bitcoin’s ability to fulfill the
vital crypto role in this equation, given outstanding transaction
time, price volatility and high transaction fees.
PayPal Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: PYPL) was in the
news recently due to comments from ousted CEO Bill Harris, who
downplayed merchant adoption rates of Bitcoin, citing some of the
aforementioned concerns, even going so far as to call Bitcoin a
scam. Little wonder he got his walking papers, given the pro-crypto
attitude of PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and more recent
developments such as a patent application filing in March by the
company for a system to speed up handling those long private keys
used to transact BTC. The patent application details a means of
creating secondary wallets with their own unique user keys for
buyer and seller, practically eliminating the wait time payees
currently experience when trying to ensure they will receive a
given virtual currency payment.
Visa, Inc. (NYSE: V) former CEO of UK and
Ireland operations Marc O'Brien recently joined Estonian crypto
startup Crypterium, which raised $52 million last year via an
initial coin offering. Crypterium is laser-focused on eliminating
the difficulties associated with using crypto for everyday
transactions and seeks to streamline the entire process, hoping to
eventually partner with Visa to roll out crypto and/or virtual
cards attached to proprietary wallets. This is an area that Visa
already has considerable experience in, with offerings such as
Virtual VISA credit cards. O'Brien was keen to highlight the
potential here in a recent Business Insider interview, noting how
Crypterium and Visa could provide a haven for consumers in
high-inflation markets such as Argentina or Turkey.
International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:
IBM), whose new head of blockchain development recently
acknowledged cryptocurrency talks with about 20 central banks from
various countries (including G20 nations), is predicting that some
will dare to toy with crypto, with the most potential shown by
Sweden, North America and Asia (http://www.ccw.fm/2Mn0V). IBM’s crypto-friendly
policies mark an evolution in the juggernaut’s rhetoric. The
company is now doubling-down on its use of Lumens (XLM), and it has
significant first-mover advantage in the space with the capacity to
be a real king-maker for innovative cryptos.
On the Cusp of a Digital Sea Change
Any way you slice it, cryptocurrency is knocking on the door of
the sprawling $3 trillion-plus global digital payments market
(http://www.ccw.fm/0yd1W), demanding to be let in (if
it doesn’t simply tear the door off). True innovators on the coin
and blockchain ends of the market stand to be the biggest winners,
with user-friendliness and merchant adoption in the driver’s
seat.
For more information on SmartCash, please visit SmartCash (Crypto:
SMART).
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