Internet Computer

I’m old enough to remember when you bought items off eBay by sending the seller a physical check in the mail. The entire process could take weeks as the seller would usually wait for the check to arrive and clear before shipping the purchased item. All of that changed in 2000 when eBay integrated PayPal in order to accept credit card transactions as payment. From there, e-commerce exploded because of the vastly improved user experience.What is crazy is we haven’t evolved that payment system since 2000. Literally, the same mechanism is still driving almost all of the economic activity online. Bitcoin needs to change that.The Issue with Credit-based TransactionsWhile innovative in 2000, we have become complacent with the user experience of online credit card transactions and rarely do we recognize the downsides of the current system, including:<ul><li>It is inherently insecure.</li><li>Credit-based systems encourage debt consumption</li><li>Most of the world’s population still does not have access to credit</li><li>Cross-border transactions encounter costs of exchanging between fiats</li><li>Credit card transaction fees are relatively high</li></ul>Bitcoin solves many of these issues, however the user experience of Bitcoin purchases online is more like pre-Paypal eBay than post-Paypal eBay. It’s embarrassing to think that, as we pursue legal tender status in the real world, Bitcoin has made almost no progress in adoption within its digital home turf. In short, making Bitcoin the preferred currency of the internet is the path of least resistance to making Bitcoin legal tender in the real world. The problem, however, is the user experience of paying with Bitcoin.Bitcoin as the SolutionMany have tried to solve the user experience problem with transacting in Bitcoin online, but every solution to date has failed either because it required too many sacrifices to core Bitcoin principles (like security and decentralization), was not scalable, or, quite frankly, still sucked from a user experience perspective. For Bitcoin to become the internet’s currency, transacting in Bitcoin needs to be at parity with transacting with fiat.Luckily, the Internet Computer’s native integration with Bitcoin makes it possible to transact in Bitcoin not just at parity with fiat, but far exceeding it. It is now possible to create user experiences with Bitcoin that far exceed the current user experience of using credit online. The ICP &lt;&gt; BTC integration, which went live late last year, provides the first scalable web solution for serving the global online economy, and since Internet Computer dapps can be fully on-chain (including front ends), this user experience comes without the standard trade-offs on security and decentralization.It’s time for Bitcoin to reach a billion monthly users. It’s time for Bitcoin to become the internet’s currency. The tech is now ready with the Internet Computer. It’s up to web developers and Bitcoin supporters to make it happen. I look forward to watching Bitcoin become the preferred currency online.By Kyle Langham, Director of Data &amp; Analytics &#64; DFINITY

Bitcoin == Internet's Currency?

Internet_Computer

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