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TLDR. The conventional wisdom is that Legacy Finance Institutions will lead the way to mainstream adoption of Bitcoin.  This post outlines an alternative thesis that the route to mainstream adoption of Bitcoin is by building a second leg as a currency for everyday spending among those excluded from financial services today, starting in countries with a Fiat currency crisis such as Venezuela

This is an update to this chapter of The Blockchain Economy digital book.

This post describes:

• The conventional wisdom trajectory

• Bitcoin’s second leg will be built from the wreckage of exotic Fiat currencies

• When Bitcoin gets traction in developed markets, it will be via those who feel excluded by Legacy Finance

• Traders are from Venus, Investors are from Mars and Martians need to study Venezuela

• Profit comes from serving the excluded said Captain Obvious

• Investors who understand Bitcoin users will do best

• Serving the Bottom of the Pyramid is a lot easier when the marginal cost is zero and payment cost is close to zero

• Blue and Red Ocean strategies of Legacy Finance Institutions in the Blockchain Economy

• Watch what is happening in the Exotic Fiat Currency Countries.

The conventional wisdom trajectory 

The conventional wisdom trajectory has 3 phases – from past, through present, to future.

• Phase 1. The past (still with us). Cypherpunks, Anarchists & Libertarians. This created the early traction that got Bitcoin from an obscure message board to the possibility of game-changing innovation.

• Phase 2. The present. Speculators. This classic speculative bubble of late 2017 (followed by the bear market of 2018 and early 2019) brought in new players and new capital (and excited the Legacy Finance Institutions). 

• Phase 3. The future. Institutions & Governments. This is when Bitcoin is supposed to grow up and put on a suit, to make it make it easy for the masses to use services offered by Legacy Finance. Conventional wisdom sees this like a pivot from Phases 1 and 2. In this pivot scenario, the Cyperpunks, Anarchists & Libertarians are thrown into the dustbin of history and the speculators are told to grow up and trust in the products sold by Legacy Finance. 

This chapter argues a contrarian thesis that bitcoin’s path to mainstream is not a pivot but rather a continuation of Phases 1 & 2. The conventional wisdom scenario plays well at Davos (World Economic Forum), the gathering place of those with wealth and power (Big Tech & Big Bank). This post shows why that conventional wisdom is wrong.

Bitcoin needs a second leg to be stable. Bitcoin’s first leg – store of value – will eventually become unstable if it has to stand on its own. Bitcoin needs a second leg – a currency for everyday spending. That second leg will not be built by Institutions or Speculators, it will be built by entrepreneurs (maybe with Institutional partners) who know how to serve the needs of those who have been excluded by Legacy Finance (who need Bitcoin as a currency for everyday use).

Bitcoin’s second leg will be built from the wreckage of Exotic Fiat currencies 

We can witness this happening today in countries such as Venezuela that are suffering from hyperinflation (as described in this post). This has reached Act 4 in the Creative Destruction 7 Act Play This is “when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro” (quote from Hunter S Thompson, who was certainly weird but also professional enough to write best-selling books).

It is likely that the Bitcoin habit, which we can witness in Venezuela, will spread to countries that are close, physically and/or culturally, to countries with hyperinflation. These neighbours will witness the horror of hyperinflation and see how practical Bitcoin is as an alternative. For example, Argentina and Peru, while not yet suffering hyperinflation, may follow the example of Venezuela. This has reached Act 3 in the Creative Destruction 7 Act Play. Act 3 is Denial. A famous example of the Denial Act 3 was subprime mortgages that blew up in the Global Financial Crisis in 2008. For a long time the surface numbers looked good until a few nonconformists looked below the surface (watch The Big Short movie for an entertaining take on that story). A more recent example in Finance was the Wells Fargo fake accounts scandal (which was going on for a long time before it was uncovered).

If Bitcoin is limited to countries with hyperinflation, those of us working in developed markets with strong Fiat currencies can dismiss it as a phenomenon (like wheelbarrows full of cash) that have nothing to do with “normal” countries.  The next bull market needs a use case story that more people can relate to.

If  Bitcoin spreads from Venezuela to other countries such as Argentina and Peru, the markets will have a story to relate to. There are 180 currencies listed as legal tender, of which only 8 are considered as “major” by the FX market. Contagion spreads rapidly.

When we see that contagion spread to developed markets with Fiat currencies that are perceived to be strong today, then we will have reached mainstream adoption. Again we need to look at edge cases aka those who feel excluded by Legacy Finance.

When Bitcoin gets traction in developed markets, it will be via those who feel excluded by Legacy Finance

This is Act 2 in the Creative Destruction 7 Act play. Act 2 is when we see Straws in the Wind. It takes guts to see a few straws blowing about and bet that this is caused by an invisible wind. The signs of change are far from obvious but “the answer my friend is blowing in the wind”.

The reason change comes from the excluded is obvious. Their needs are not being met by Legacy Finance. We see that happening today in Venezuela. When the issue is feeding your family, the clunky UI and risks of Bitcoin do not seem a big deal. Using Bitcoin gets onto your Must Do Today action list.

Are there markets like this in the developed world? Are there enough people excluded by Legacy Finance in the developed world to make sure that the Bitcoin contagion spreads to the developed world? I believe the answer is yes and that we can see this answer blowing in the wind of three niche markets in developed world that have excluded by Legacy Finance:

• Legally excluded. For example, businesses operating in the Legal Cannabis market that cannot open a conventional Fiat bank account. Or cryptocurrency businesses who cannot get a normal bank to offer them an account, who go to a crypto friendly bank like Silvergate.

• Financially excluded because they are poor. The Western underbanked, excluded from or ripped off by Legacy Finance market providers will see the appeal of Bitcoin. When told by Legacy Finance that “Bitcoin is bad for you” they may take the view that if Legacy Finance does not like it, then it must be good.

• Excluded by Banks because they are Small Business. Daily Fintech has dedicated one day a week (Wednesday) to Small Business finance because Small Business owners are a good example of the Excluded – banks did not want them because they were neither Corporate or Consumer (the two models that Banks understood). This is why Square is such a big player in Bitcoin. Small Business owners who want to avoid problems with credit card networks (see here for more) will be motivated to accept Bitcoin and spend in Bitcoin.

Traders are from Venus, Investors are from Mars and Martians need to study Venezuela

The difference between traders and investors looks small on the surface – it is simply the length of the holding period. In reality, the approach is fundamentally and completely different.

Bitcoin traders look at price charts. Bitcoin investors look at how people are using Bitcoin.

Given that real Bitcoin usage today is quite limited, Bitcoin investors have historically looked at what products are being built today that will enable new forms of usage in the future. To give an example from an earlier era, an investor would look at an early version of Hotmail and extrapolate that mass use of email via browsers was possible.

The hope story on Bitcoin is getting a bit long in the tooth. The market needs to see real usage traction, not just products with potential use. For that we need to look outside the developed world.

So Bitcoin investors need to understand how Bitcoin could serve the Excluded

Traders need a story. Bitcoin as a one-legged stool (digital gold store of value) is not enough to power the next bull market. To reach the mainstream investor, Legacy Finance Institutions will need more than the how (things like Custody), they will also need a usage story. They will need to show why Bitcoin will change the world and how that is already happening.

Traders will still trade and their liquidity is essential. Some of the traders who got into Bitcoin during the last bull/bear cycle will get back into active trading during the next bull/bear cycle. Many will do this via Institutions, others will use startups.

Profit comes from serving the excluded said Captain Obvious

Question: which market looks more attractive?

• A. Markets where customers have many options. You will need to persuade them to switch from their current way of doing things and the advantages you offer are not really life-changing.

• B. Markets where customers have few, if any, good options. If you can deliver them a solution it will be  life-changing for them and they will take whatever steps are needed to get your solution.

You probably answered B, yet most solutions target A. A big reason is that most developers today work in developed markets (where Customer A is located) and we find it easy to build solutions for people who are like us.

Investors who understand Bitcoin users will do best

That is another Captain Obvious statement and yet most investors work in developed markets and feel comfortable investing in solutions for those markets.

We can see this in some early Bitcoin entrepreneurs such as Wences Casares of Xapo who comes from Argentina.

Serving the Bottom of the Pyramid is a lot easier when the marginal cost is zero and payment cost is close to zero

The Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP) is a socio-economic concept that allows us to group that vast segment  – in excess of about four billion  – of the world’s poorest citizens constituting an invisible and unserved market blocked by challenging barriers that prevent them from realising their human potential for their own benefit, those of their families, and that of society’s at large.

Technically, a member of the BOP is part of the largest but poorest groups of the world’s population, who live with less than $2.50 a day and are excluded from the modernity of our globalised civilised societies, including consumption and choice as well as access to organised financial services. Some estimates based on the broadest segment of the BOP put its demand as consumers at about $5 trillion in Purchasing Power Parity terms, making it a desirable objective for creative and leading visionary businesses throughout the world. One of the undeniable successes in this process is the explosion of the Microfinance industry witnessed in many parts of the world.

The first person to really focus on BOP was C.K. Prahalad (1941-2010), who in the process has inspired influential leaders and countless ordinary citizens sharing his vision, to joint efforts for the unleashing of their creative and productive potential as part of an inclusive capitalist system, free of paternalism toward the poor. Source

The iconic use case was Unilever with their single serving soap packages in India. That took real innovation.

Serving the Bottom of the Pyramid is a lot easier when the marginal cost is zero, for obvious reasons. You can deliver at the price point needed in the market without having a margin problem with cost of goods sold .

The advent of fast, low cost micropayments via offchain technology such Lightning Network also make it much easier to profitably serve the Bottom of the Pyramid. Credit Cards obviously don’t work in that market and physical cash has hidden costs (theft, time, handling etc).

Blue and Red Ocean strategies of Legacy Finance Institutions in the Blockchain Economy

The Cypherpunks, Anarchists & Libertarians who kick-started the Bitcoin Blockchain engine tend to relegate Legacy Finance Institutions to the dustbin of history. Clearly Bitcoin is a big bang disruption for Legacy Finance and many will suffer a Blockbuster/Borders/HMV/Kodak type fate.

We see two fundamental strategies for dealing with this kind of big bang disruption:

• Blue ocean. Partner with Entrepreneurs who know how to serve the excluded. For more on this please read Getting to strategic value in partnerships between Fintech ventures and Banks.

• Red ocean. Beat your current Legacy Finance competitors, even at risk of disrupting your current business, by aggressively offering Bitcoin related services 

Institutions need help from a range of service providers such as strategy to code to legal. Serving the Institutions will always be a profitable business.

Watch what is happening in the Exotic Fiat Currency Countries

The bridge from hyperinflation “broken Fiat” Currency Countries to developed markets will be via “exotic Fiat” Currency Countries.

The 8 most traded currencies are

U.S. Dollar (USD)

European Euro (EUR)

Japanese Yen (JPY)

British Pound (GBP)

Swiss Franc (CHF)

Canadian Dollar (CAD)

Australian Dollar (AUD)

South African Rand (ZAR)

There are 180 current currencies across the world, as recognized by the United Nations. That is a lot of what FX traders call the “exotic” currencies.

Watch the currencies/countries that are physically and or culturally close to “broken Fiat” currency countries. For example, If Bitcoin spreads from Venezuela to Argentina and Peru, the markets will have a story to relate to and other countries may copy this way to avoid the horrors of hyperinflation.

Image Source.

Bernard Lunn is a Fintech deal-maker, investor, entrepreneur and advisor. He is the author of The Blockchain Economy and CEO of Daily Fintech.

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Climate change is no longer just the concern of flood-exposed coastal residents, or those who inhabit potential wildfire areas; there is growing indication from insurance companies that the cost of events related to climate change will spill over in significant ways to property insurance in total.  Global insurer Munich Re’s Chief Climatologist, Ernst Rauch, recently discussed the issue with The Guardian, “Climate change could make insurance too expensive for ordinary people”, indicating that the rising financial effect of catastrophes could spill over into rates being taken across the  spectrum of property insurance policies. 

“If the risk from wildfires, flooding, storms or hail is increasing then the only sustainable option we have is to adjust our risk prices accordingly. In the long run it might become a social issue,” he said after Munich Re published a report into climate change’s impact on wildfires. “Affordability is so critical because some people on low and average incomes in some regions will no longer be able to buy insurance.”

Low and average incomes?  If one agrees that Munich Re’s outlook is correct it might be said that affordability will be an issue for ALL incomes in some regions if no carrier makes insurance available due to excessive risk;  if there is no property insurance available (or it’s not purchased by customers- interesting perspective on earthquake insurance here) this problem spills over to financial markets in terms of loss of mortgagee casualty protection for real property loans.  Take the spillway further, and riskier areas become less viable for economic activity in the big picture.  Consider even further- reduction in occupied properties, reduction in property tax revenues, public revenue… now there’s trouble.

What’s to do?  Wring hands, rend garments, wail and gnash teeth?  How about some real change of thought for property insurance?  Let’s look at coverage, coverage amounts, indemnity, parametric options, and connected properties (IoT).

If property insurance policies covered just fires or probable maximum loss (PML) perils, insurance would be significantly less costly.   Correspondingly, if those PML perils had a ‘floor’ severity amount beneath which the customer held responsibility (not unlike windstorm or earthquake perils in the US), insurance would be less costly.  If policy coverage for frequent claims, e.g., water losses, was capped at a known amount, insurance would be less costly.  Continuing, if frequent insurance claims were payable essentially on demand (no claim inspection needed), insurance would be less costly.  Even further- if insurance products were more available with less cost of acquisition (customer or company cost), premium volume would rise, making insurance less costly.  Customers have become accustomed to the granular indemnity response that today’s policies provide, and that may need to change.

So what’s the point?  Again, the industry is at a potential tipping point- natural and manmade losses are growing faster than expected ($500 billion in 2017-18 alone, per insurer Swiss Re , estimated $200 Bn insured), and the purpose of this article is not to focus on what is a given- increasing cost of insurance due to the expectation that the pattern continues.  Of course absent the presence of insurance to indemnify at a time of loss, what matters the cost?

What if:

• Connected devices became ubiquitous, not just as features in devices, but as data collectors?  Simple, inexpensive moisture sensors for example that not only serve to turn off water supply, but also as aggregators of damage information.   A leak occurs, triggers a parametric cover response from the property owner’s policy.  Sensors that recognize material obsolescence, prompting maintenance by the property owner.  Roof sensing that anticipates not only wear, but damage due to sudden perils.
• Property insurance policies became hybrid indemnity/parametric risk management vehicles, with higher frequency, lower severity claims paid upon occurrence, at a predetermined coverage limit with no need (other than fraud vetting) for expensive claim investigation?
• Mortgage holders held part of the risk for major losses in areas where climate risk perils, e.g., coastal flooding, wildfire, etc., are known elevated risks?  Mortgagees do this now to an extent as those property owners without adequate risk cover will walk away, and the mortgagees are left with the property.  Change the mortgage payment risk from an upfront portfolio percentage to anticipate walkways, to a loan ‘premium’ to help cover the elevated insurance policy premiums.
• Governments held parametric disaster response insurance policies that triggered when events occurred, jump-starting financial response to community-wide disasters?
• There was an acceptance that pollution is contributing to climate change, and pollution tax paid by firms was used to fund disaster recovery efforts?

Just some thoughts, but holding key ideas- broadening responsibility for risk management beyond just the individual property owner and changing the expectation of property insurance from a full indemnity model to one that recognizes a loss but doesn’t hold one party to the contract (the insurer) solely responsible for determining the amount of loss and working to identify every detail of the financial loss.

If property insurance is to remain viable from an industry basis it seems the product needs to be considered from a loss/disaster perspective backwards, from a who is at risk from a ‘no recovery’ aspect, and then from a who benefits from helping fund risk management efforts.  There are plenty of data available to the industry to calculate the probable cost of individual high-frequency claims, and by extension the premiums needed for a parametric basis for settling that nature of claims.  Individual investigation of smaller claims is simply not a highest and best use of expensive human capital, and if AI is to be applied to those claims, why not carry the knowledge to preemptive claim resolution (loss is detected, payment is made?)  Sure, the policy forms that exist today would need rework (as would customer expectations), but in the face of pricing risk sharing beyond many property owners isn’t radical thinking needed?

Wildfire losses like those experienced in California or Greece exposed the nature of who and what is insured, the haves and have nots, and also the difficulty in rebuilding (or not) areas that have had regional destruction ( see Paradise California’s wildfire recovery challenges.)  Significant wind and flooding damage in Hong Kong, Japan, southeast US, and southern Africa produce ripples that extend materially well beyond those regions.  Confidence that risk is being apportioned and shared will serve to stabilize capital that is being made available as a backstop for significant risk (catastrophe bonds, insurance linked securities, and traditional reinsurance- with an interesting ECIS regional perspective Seeking Alpha view here ).

Climate change effects highlight the big responses to big events, but whether there’s a clear bread crumb trail between change in climate and change in property insurance the anticipated path is clear- the cost of insurance is rising along with global tides.  And the effect that all benefit from a viable, affordable insurance industry is also clear- risk management is a keystone factor that if absent ripples through economies on a macro scale, and as such needs a unique macro approach to ensure we are all not insurance poor.

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Patrick Kelahan is a CX, engineering & insurance professional, working with Insurers, Attorneys & Owners. He also serves the insurance and Fintech world as the ‘Insurance Elephant’.

I have no positions or commercial relationships with the companies or people mentioned. I am not receiving compensation for this post.

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