Comedic Gold

I'm young enough I have only watched the adoption of a couple disruptive technologies.

The cell phone.

Netflix and the break away from 'appointment tv'

When I talk about disruptive technologies, I'm talking about new technology that changes the world as we know it.   Part of this process is the news cycle.   A properly disruptive technology is often in the news.

Because Bitcoin is massively disruptive, never before in my life have I been so excited to wake up in the morning.   I wake up, grab my phone, and read through all the news that happened in just the past 8 hours.

This is real life people, and its happening before your very eyes.

This morning I got a really really good one.  Sometimes I feel like I couldn't even make this stuff up, its comedic gold.

Here is the article. Fed Warns of 'Escalating Threats' to U.S. Payment System

The FEDERAL RESERVE has noted these deficiencies in their current system

1) Checks are old and outdated, people prefer electronic.

2) Other countries have real time payments, but the US does does not

3) People desire these features

            A) A real-time validation process assuring the payee that the payer’s account exists and it has enough funds or available credit to cover the payment;

            B) Assurance that a payment will not be returned or reversed;

            C) Timely notification to the payer and payee that the payment has been made;

            D) Near-real-time posting / availability of funds to both the payer’s and payee’s accounts; and

            E) Masked account details, eliminating the need for end users to disclose bank account information to each other. (checks and credit cards are literally giving somebody else access to your bank account)

4)  In general, cross-border payments from and to the United States are slow, inconvenient, costly, and lack transparency regarding fees and timing. (HA!)

Those bullet points above describe Bitcoin to a capital "T"  Note that they did not specifically call out bitcoin, but they described it.   The Feds do not like to call attention to bitcoin, as it only furthers bitcoins adoption.   Imagine the media frenzy if the paper mentioned Bitcoin?   CNN would be running stories for months about how Bitcoin is better than the federal payment system.

In general the FEDERAL RESERVE has just said they consider Bitcoin an  Escalating Threat to U.S. Payment System

The point of the article was the FEDERAL RESERVE asking for help on how they can innovate their payment system.   Comments are due by December 13, 2013.   I'm sure at the speed of government they will have some decisions by December 13, 2014, with actions by December 13, 2015.   By that time Bitcoin will STILL be light-years ahead of their 'payment system'

On a side note I've written a couple topics on "Currency Competition".   If the only thing Bitcoin does is provide competition for the monopoly over government money, the world will be better for it as governments are forced to innovate their systems, or go bankrupt.