Quote from: jseverson on February 22, 2018, 02:51:19 AM

Quote

Although its potentially revolutionary applications are apparent once one has made the effort to understand the principles of encryption and distributed ledgering behind blockchain, it takes a while, and a good bit of reading, before the man on the street can see what makes blockchains potentially so useful. Tech pundits talk about replacing the middle-man facilities traditionally provided by the financial services industry such as clearing payments and fraud prevention. But as far as many are concerned, banks provide this service adequately well, at an apparently low cost to the end user.

What it fails to mention is that not everyone has access to banking services thanks to all the red tape that surrounds them. Even those that do have access to their services have to go through a bunch of red tape. Bitcoin addresses these problems by putting you in control of your own money. I do understand that not many people have any problems with the banking system though, so it's true that adoption on this end could take a while.

Either way, the article does make good points, but it seems a little one-sided. Then again, I guess it's supposed to highlight problems (and potential problems), which it does do.

That is a good point and just adds to the list of unique benefits of bitcoin in particular and blockchain in general. It even goes further to cover identity management that can help empower people in regions where the majority of citizens are not in possession of any documents so even if they had access to banks could not open an account. In this case bitcoin helps in two ways to provide access to financial instruments but also to a digital identity for purposes beyond financial transactions.