I don't think coinbase/bitcoin will replace anything. At best they might get 1% of that market, but they will never be real competition. Besides the technical issues where cryptocurrency cannot keep up with the same demands credit and banks can. Coinbase sits on a razor blade of questionable ethical practices. Reddit and other cryptocurrency forums always have a handful of people asking for help dealing with exchanges(say exchanges because not just coinbase does this) that either fail to transfer funds or funds just go missing over night. The regular response from people is "it is crypto money what you expect?". Saying it is the normal for money to go missing with no recourse just demonstrate the lack of control and power a end user has in this anarchy financial system.
I wonder if there's an opposite term for 'leapfrogging' [1], whereby the pace or focus of technology -- instead of allowing poorer countries to skip trends altogether -- it leaves them behind.<p>An example of leapfrogging is China's payment system which switched directly from a cash-only system to a mobile-payment system in the span of a decade, entirely bypassing the need for credit cards.<p>I believe that cryptocurrencies, ironically, are leaving the unbanked populace behind by being a payment-only system instead of being a payment-credit system. If Bitcoin is truly successful and replaces Visa and MasterCard -- both of which also operate as a credit system -- then that's just going to result in slower economic growth in underdeveloped countries.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leapfrogging" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leapfrogging</a>
"Bitcoin has never had a service interruption" — LMAO!<p>Yeah, no service interruption. Just a period of weeks on and off where it took hours or days to confirm transactions.
Assinine, coinbase has MANY problems and is nowhere near a market leader. Paypal would stand a better chance, but then they use mastercard for their debit card, but if they could roll out their own network of cards like Amex/Discover have that is accepted everywhere, then they'd be the new dog. Stripe also could do something like this considering their market share.<p>People trust paypal/stripe over coinbase, coinbase has been known to freeze money and have horrible customer service. I've taken all my coins out and won't be using them in the future at all.
Nice work, author of blog post. 1) Recognize a stagnation in e-coin investment; 2) buy up some Coinbase; 3) Write a blog post how Coinbase will beat Bitcoin; 4) Profit.