Technology disrupts most, but not all.
Most phone companies are now ISPs
Kodak didn't become a digital photography company
Xapo is already a pure Bitcoin bank, Coinbase is becoming one.
Others like Revolut include Bitcoin services.
Will banks survive and thrive with Bitcoin (a lot of people are still addicted to custodial services) or will they die?
Banks have been around for thousands of years. They're not going to disappear. They'll adapt and business models will be altered.
It depends if credit stays or not I think. Do we move to a fully asset based monetary system again or hybrid!?
I hope it doesnβt
Certainly the technology available now doesn't warrant giving banks this special privilege anymore. We've already seen massive consolidation b Banks and closing branches.
Yes
Yep, a classic case of βif you canβt beat them, join themβ combined with βdonβt adopt; lose outβ
Yes
Adapt too. Thatβs when small, highly agile setups can really get ahead too.
Yes, I donβt think all the banks can survive, but itβs very possible some may thrive, including banks that are yet to exist.
π―
Weirdly, I am kinda waiting for the publishing world to catch on. Weβve had decades of βmoaningβ about content monetisation and resorting to paywalls (FT, Times, etc). Allow me to pay in bitcoin and you might see some actual revenue!
banks won't die but will adapt, as they should.
people can easily ask for digital assurances on their savings (e.g. multisig), where in the past with gold they couldn't -- it was "locked" away in a vault leading to an easy path for fractionalising if the bank were to get greedy.
so there's money to made by the banks that play fair, which this new tech will force them to do in the long run. the one's that don't ...
Yes, good point.
plus there'll probably emerge a plethora of banks (fedimints) so the market will decide on the responsible ones.
exciting time line for sure
i think it's more likely that we will see something like a controller that has a core of Ark with channels over Lightning and the bank will be Bitcoin and everything else will be a clearinghouse of tier 1 or tier 2 (as in, lightning and ark respectively)
the internet takes out the latency and complexity of banking and it can become a lot simpler
i also think that the single unified lightning network of today will fracture into multiple independent networks, it doesn't have the capacity to scale that big and if it can hook into a bulk clearinghouse scheme like Ark it will be a network of networks
#afternoonthoughts
sensible thoughts.
agree on the unpredictable layering of tech. the white paper didn't specify a lightning layer, then a cashu layer, then a .... so your hypothesis is a totally valid one.
