At BitAccess, we have made it our mission to bring digital currency to the world. There are many reasons why this is important. The first is that access makes a currency liquid.
In economic terms, a liquid asset is:
An asset which can be quickly and easily sold on the market at little or no loss of value.
Cash is the most liquid of assets. It is universally accepted and has no loss of value when purchasing goods or services. For bitcoin to reach its full potential, it needs to be liquid for everyone. Simply put, if bitcoin is not liquid, it is not a currency.
Today, the news isn’t great in respect to bitcoin liquidity. A lot of services allow conversion of bitcoin into forms of financial deposits. These include bank, exchange or credit card balances. These conversions are slow and difficult.
Cash, on the other hand, is the lowest common denominator of payments.
Cash is:
- Universally accepted
- Unbiased
- Free
Cash is to payments as SMS is to messaging. It is a trusted form of payment you cannot go without.
Services such as Coinbase, Circle and BitPay have made great interfaces for conversion of bitcoin into current account deposits. However, these services leave huge swaths of the population underserved.
Many people don’t like to give out bank account information online. Most people can’t wait 3-5 days for a payment to clear. One of bitcoin’s unique selling points is it can do what banks can’t: settle quickly and easily.
So, what are we doing to solve this problem? Over the past two years, we’ve been building a global network for quick and easy cash conversion to bitcoin. We do this with custom-made kiosks we call BTMs.
Wait, you mean to say the best way to buy internet money is offline?
Interestingly enough, yes. Our network is independent of the banking system. It is a parallel network where we are free to innovate. We are proud of how far we have come. In addition, we are excited to take innovation to the next level.
What excites us most is we are starting to see people use bitcoin in real life. A lot. There is a whole market of people using bitcoin in new and innovative ways. There is a new bitcoin-based economy forming.
These people are not using online brokerages or exchanges. They are using BTMs or similar services which are quick and easy to use. Sadly, most of these people are being underserved. We can’t get BTMs out worldwide quickly or efficiently enough to take this to the next level.
The ecosystem as a whole needs to spend more time targeting these customers. These are the real users of bitcoin. These people are using bitcoin as a transactional tool, not as an investment.
For these customers, we continue to bring fast and easy access to digital currency by looking out for the underserved. We are excited about new products we have in the pipeline for this particular market – stay tuned.