Visa is looking for someone to head up its foray into blockchain and cryptocurrency.
Global financial services corporation Visa is seeking blockchain talent for the position of Technical Product Manager at Visa Fintech in their Palo Alto office. The person will be responsible for the execution of Visa’s product strategy within a cryptocurrency ecosystem, and will be required to manage the roadmap for crypto-related opportunities.
If you cannot beat then, join them.
I will admit the my headline is a bit of clickbait although not without some fact. Steem will be a part of the destruction of Mastercard and Visa, at least as those entities stand now.
Mastercard and Visa are worth billions because they erected massive global payment systems. People all over the world use their network to secure transactions. For this, merchants pay a fee on each transaction in addition to having to get the proper hardware. This can range from .75% to about 3% depending upon the volume an establishment does.
Isn't it interesting that cryptocurrency is a global payment system?
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Every cryptocurrency on a decentralized blockchain has an automatic global payment system built in from the start. Once there is a wallet, people can send and receive money. The verification is done by the blockchain eliminating the need for a third party. This makes these two companies passe.
Payment systems are worth a lot of money. Visa has a market cap of $340B. This is a company that basically just verifies transactions around the world while moving money. It is one of those "middle men" that is ideally suited for elimination by cryptocurrency.
Since cryptocurrency is a global payment system, it obviously has immediate value. Think about that for a second. A merchant, anywhere in the world, can get an account by downloading a wallet. This allows for the moving away from cash. It also allows for the verification of every purchase through the use of blockchain. There is no need to pay Visa or Mastercard their fees nor buy the expensive equipment.
The advantage that the two existing networks have is speed. Mastercard and Visa can process tens of thousands of transactions per second. Bitcoin cannot even reach double digits. Also, verification on Bitcoin takes 10 minutes while it is nanoseconds on the centralized networks.
This is where Steem and other cryptocurrencies enter the picture. Most are far superior to Bitcoin in transaction time. Also, the capacity of the networks, in totality, is increasing to the point it can handle all of the MC/Visa traffic with ease. While the validity of 2,000 different cryptocurrencies is in question, the fact is there are computers around the world running those blockchains. Almost all, if they are operating, have capacity.
These ecosystems are run without an administrator. That means no central servers to hack and get private information. It also means there is no company to collect the data and sell it to advertisers or other nefarious companies. Instead, it is just a ledger of transactions run on a decentralized system.
Can you see how much trouble these companies are in if they do not adapt?
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The financial world likes to blast cryptocurrency as being nothing but a sham. In reality, cryptocurrency is a threat because it is a global payment system they cannot control. They are systems that do not operate behind a firewall and are attacked regularly. In spite of that, you do not see global outages.
We gained some insight into the power of blockchains when Steemit.com came under a DDoS attack. Because of the decentralized nature, even though the Steemit interface was affected, the rest of the network continued without a hitch. The other interfaces were not phased at all by what was occurring with the Steemit site. Transactions still were taking place across the network since the blockchain was secure.
There is a reason the financial sector is fighting back so hard. Their entire existence is under immediate attack. They are well aware of this. Sadly, for them, there is little they can do other than try to keep people ill-informed.
In short, the parallel system that is being erected via decentralized blockchains is something they cannot compete with. Each time a commercial transaction is conducted in STEEM, Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dash, or any other cryptocurrency, that is another nail in their coffin.
The benefits to this technology is simply too great.
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