I have just returned from two day forum that took place in Riga. It was broadly about electronic money with some accents on crypto currencies.
It was actually very good with majority of audience and speakers being CEOs of mainstream companies like Visa and MasterCard Europe, yandex.money, Neteller, (former) Head of Bitcoin Foundation, lawyers etc. It basically covered the full spectrum of the topic and has been a fantastic platform for networking.
However, Im a little surprised that the technologies based on Bitcoin protocol havent been more endorsed by the mainstream players. It wasnt a question of technological inability to do so, but rather lack of trust. It made me realised how small and insignificant bitcoin really is when comparing to other means of payments. Heads of financial services were very disapproving of this technology, which reminded me of Kodak which dismissed the idea of digital camera which later on proved to be the thing that killed their business.
What one could really learn from this conference was that there is a wave of new laws designed to make bitcoin less barbaric. Ive spoken with leaders in their respective fields and they are really keen on accepting bitcoin and altcoins but lack of regulation simply prevents them from doing it.
Another thing that one could learn is that even the hard-core sceptics could not dismiss that the strength of bitcoin is based on its sheer size of a hashing power and the utility that it serves. It was great to talk to Jon Matonis and the head of Gigahash, this gave me great insight into things to come. At the same time showed how long road Diamond has to travel before becoming a real success.
The whole event left me with the sense of urgency that in order to move forward Diamond has to be bold in its actions, progressive and if necessary abandon some of the ideas it thought were right, for the sake of the greater good. In order to make any impact on anything we need to get to the top area of the market capitalisation list. We need to involve more people in the production of Diamonds success, but we would not compromise on the general plan that has been set in stone a long time ago. All we need to do (this sounds like just but hell its not) is to change our way of thinking, change our methods and create a community of creative people who will make all the difference. We are already heavily analysing possible outcomes and to be honest with you, there will be changes and there is no way around it if we dont want to stay just some small scale project on the peripheries of the altcoin scene and the scene itself might not have much time left anyway.
I have commented many times before in the forums of other coins, and maybe this one too, that these crypto currencies will never make it to the mainstream given the way they operate today. Having worked in banking for many years I know what I am talking about. That's not to say there isn't a niche to fill, obviously there is. The question is do any of today's currencies fill it? I think Bitcoin comes the closest but there are some very significant issues with crypto currencies that must be overcome before anyone would be willing to base a system of trade on them. I get that these currencies want to by anonymous and decentralized. But the problem is a successfull currency has to be backed by a trustworthy source - someone who ensure the currency does not lose all of its value overnight. Who is that trustworthy source with cryptos? Mining pools are run by guys who have other jobs. When things go wrong there is no requirement to respond. If a bank has a failure it must recover in a time frame regulated by a government agency. So who overseas these coins? Most crypto coins are run by very informal organizations of "volunteers". That sounds nice but how much risk are you willing to take on an operation like that? A vendor who takes bitcoins in exchange for merchandise he pays for in dollars want to know that his bitcoins will not drop 50% in value overnight.
I don't pretend to have all the answers, but I can identify some real issues that put the long term viability of all crypto coins at risk. Banks will never back crypto coins in a serious way. Banks know all too well what kinds of controls they must have in place to protect their deposits and no cryptocoin comes anywhere near what is necessary for banks to approve.
I agree, that's why there is great division within bitcoin community between those who are pro and those who are against regulations. Regulations, sensible of course, would open up the whole markets revolutionizing payments, not mentioning the kind of boost of value the coin would get. However, regulation is something that only the toughest, the best capitalised, the most established will be able to weather. The rest will be battered to death or pushed deep underground, possibly into Tor's deep web. You are highlighting important point here, that decentralisation is great, but in terms of success, centrasiation is the only way forward in this rigidly regulated world.
Apart from that, Bitcoin researchers are working hard on finally coming up with working and reliable solution to the side-chain problem. This is great threat to a lot of projects out there and time is running out. Diamond should start moving in that direction at some point as well, but I believe there are also some other fundamental features that should be looked into and changed before we embark on that one.
Just don't despair folks, not everything is lost. We can rock this boat, but we need to make right decisions and not be afraid of the changes. There are businesses out there who would consider Diamond incorporated if presented the right way, so regulations are regulations but we can create conditions which would be good enough for some big player to use our services.