Bitcoin needs to find creative uses to get traction say pioneers
(l-r) Nic Cary, Blockchain; Stephen Pair, BitPay; Will O’brien, BitGo
Leaders in the Bitcoin community have called upon innovators to come up with creative uses for the cryptocurrency, with one flagging it could mean the end to mobile phone contracts.
Speaking on a panel examining the origins and future of Bitcoin – a cyber currency created in 2009 which is ‘mined’ by computers and can be freely traded online – Stephen Pair, who runs payment gateway BitPay, described the network built up around it as “the most powerful decentralised computing network ever created”.
Will O’Brien, CEO of security system BitGo, added: “There’s no putting the genie back in the bottle here. For the first time we can have a decentralised clearing system around a currency.
“But Pair pointed out the system does not allow for fraud as every transaction is recorded and timestamped permanently,”
For marketing, this is by far the most interesting aspect of Bitcoin. We’ve just witnessed how long it takes to audit 2 years worth of media agency deals. The blockchain could do in 3 minutes what EY took 3 months to do.
While most think that Bitcoin is some anonymous currency for drugs and weapons, the fact is that transactions can be stored alongside data in an unchangeable and unforgeable way. So an agency could book a TV spot, have the transaction verified on the blockchain, record the fact the spot ran on the blockchain, and report the post on the blockchain.
It’s not going to happen next week, but over the next 10 years I’d be surprised if the media industry isn’t one of the major areas to be impacted by the blockchain.