"In Spanish we have a saying that if a genius points to the moon, a fool looks at his finger. I notice that we have this often with bitcoin," - says in an interview with the Business Insider portal, Wences Cesares, an Argentine businessman currently living in California and creator of the bitcoin online wallet Xapo, among other things. It was he who in 1994 created Internet Argentina S.A. - the first company in Argentina to provide Internet services. He sold his online brokerage service, Patagon, to the Spanish bank Santander for $750 million. At the time, it had already reached countries such as the United States, Spain and Germany. Cesares was just 25 years old at the time. Now, at the age of 40, Wences Cesares declares himself to be one of the biggest enthusiasts of Bitcoin technology. And although the last few months have not been the best in the history of the currency, at least when it comes to sharp drops in its exchange rate, the Argentinian businessman has no doubt that in the long run it will not matter much and Bitcoin has a chance to grow into the currency of the Internet: I think bitcoin is probably the most perfect form of money we have ever seen in the history of our civilization." According to Cesares, bitcoin also resembles gold in many ways, he also points out the six fundamental characteristics that it, like gold, possesses are scarcity, divisibility, portability, permanence, recognizability and convertibility: It is these six characteristics that make money money. Gold ... is the most perfect form of money we have encountered in the last 5,000 years. Nothing has stored value in the same way that gold has done. It wasn't the British pound, or the American dollar, or land, nothing. And this is all simply because it is scarce. And some people think - mistakenly - that gold has some kind of real value ... Bitcoin, like gold, has no real value, but in all but one of the characteristics mentioned, it will be much, much better than gold." Bitcoin is remarkable because it allows me to send money anywhere in the world, in real time, for free, without any intermediaries. So from a portability perspective, it is revolutionary." The element in which gold still trumps bitcoin, however, according to Cesares, is the divisibility already described: If someone offers you two identical gold coins, it really doesn't matter to you which one you get. They are exactly the same. Truly divisible. When it comes to bitcoins - each bitcoin contains a complete story within it. So if someone offers you one of two bitcoins, you should choose the one that has never been associated with, say, Silk Road or any other kind of questionable history." Cesares also pointed out the potential impact bitcoin could have on billions of people around the world currently outside the banking system for various reasons: We live in a world where 5 billion people own a cell phone but don't have their own bank account or credit card. So the same banks that are doing so well have managed to cover barely 1 billion people. We are dealing with 5 billion people disadvantaged by the fact that they do not have bank accounts or payment cards. They cannot participate in the global economy that we are talking about. Now, for the first time, we see real, real hope that this can change." In Cesares' view, bitcoin could have a relatively greater impact on the financial world in the future than the Internet currently has on the world of media and information flow. However, this will not happen right away: I think it's going to take a little bit of time, just like the Internet took a little bit of time to do that ... I think it [bitcoin] is going to be much more powerful than people may think, but it's also going to take more time [than the Internet] ... If it takes a decade it's going to be incredibly fast. I think it's more likely to be two decades." Cesares also points out that despite the modern Internet being so popular and globally accessible, it still does not yet have its own currency. In his opinion, bitcoin could fit perfectly into that role: I don't think bitcoin ever will or should replace money. I think the pound should remain the pound, the euro should remain the euro, and the dollar should remain the dollar. But I also think we need a worldwide type of currency, a sort of meta-currency ... When you transact over the Internet, you use dollars, euros, pounds, and that creates confusion ... What if you could actually move money in the same way you move a computer icon? Put it here. Put it there. Send it." Based on: http://www.businessinsider.com All copying, distribution, electronic processing o
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