When
I was a kid growing up we lived across the street from Mr Wilson and Mr Wilson
was our neighborhood grouch.
Every
neighborhood has one I’m sure, the kind of cranky old man or woman that when
the ball went into their yard you and your friends had to do Paper, Rock,
Scissors in order to determine who had to creep up their side path in order to
get the ball.
Well
our neighborhood had Mr Willson. And as a kid I always wondered why Mr Wilson
was so grouchy. Was it because of something that happened to him, or because no
one ever came to visit him? Or was he just always grouchy.
My
mother used to say….”he’s just old, be nice to Mr Wilson”.
Well
today I realized…..I’m turning into Mr Wilson. He didn’t start out grouchy…..he
just turned into an old grouch.
There
was the usual….we’re the fastest most efficient mining hardware platform
company and or we’re the fastest most scalable white label trading platform and
we’re here to sell to exchanges…..(hmmm if you are so good….shouldn’t you both
be off making truckloads of cash with your wares instead of selling picks and
shovels to the next gold rush….?)
In addition there was also a lot of “I work for a hedge fund and we’re curious
and want to find out more about –the space-“, or…..I’m an investor in bitcoin
…..followed by evasive answers when I asked how much Bitcoin they had actually
bought eg….6 figures…..5 figures? Hmmm you mean you spent $390 to attend a
conference on an investment with less than 4 figures?
But
what really caught me from left field and made me realize I’m turning into
grouchy “Mr Wilson” was the insistence that Bitcoins are going to solve all of
the internets problems in that people will pay for content and no longer will
content providers fall under the tyranny of Google and worthless ad banners but
that we could all start shopping for Porsches and 45ft fishing cruisers today
because content was going to become incredibly valuable as soon as Bitcoin
became the next big thing for “paying to view content”.
No
longer would you have to pay 99c for a WSJ subscription…..you could pay with
0.001btc, (putting aside for the moment that WSJ would probably want to charge
0.99btc and not less) I asked the obvious question…..if it is hard enough to
get people to pay for content in USA dollars…..then why would it be easier to
get people to jump through two hoops (transferring cash into btc then into the
content purchase).
It
was when I heard the 3rd person mention content licensing was the
answer to bitcoin that I snapped…..have none of you heard of Beenz, do none of
your realize stored value ewallets have gone through 5 generations of
implementation already (at least) eg Telstra stored value (Adelaide circa 1996?), Beenz (and others eg no longer would you have to pay....someone else would pay for you to do stuff (view ads/answer surveys .....lol I did have to chuckle when I heard about Guvera a music startup doing similar) and at least another 2-3 post 2000 either stored value ewallets or microtransaction platforms (Amazon FPS or Gumroad).
People
don’t want to pay cause your content sucks OR is ubiquitous, if virtual TipJars
worked no one would be complaining about how Spotify sucks as an income model
this week (and yes that program guide is correct, one of the heads of Spotify is
behind the launch of "CoinDesk”).
I
hate being Mr Wilson.
I
hate being the cranky old grouch.
As
a content provider I’d love for this to take off. Even more as a
libertarian/anarchist I’d love to be able to send anyone in the world a 0.001
btc for an acquisition. I just don’t think it will happen.
However,
we are now a hyper connected society (thanks Mr Berners-Lee) running around
with mobile/tablet (thanks Mr Jobs/Mr Rubin) and love to tell everyone what we
are doing and where we are doing it (thanks Mr Zuckerberg/Mr Crowley) so who
knows Bitcoin might just solve all of the previous problems that other
ewallets/virtual currency couldn’t.
If
you think I’m wrong and just a cranky old grouch then two things I learnt at
todays conference
The
second piece was even more interesting in that I think it has wider
implications. During one of the breaks I asked another attendee what he learnt
that was most of interest to him and he mentioned talking to someone who was
working on a “Documented Standard” for “the emailing of a transaction receipt”.
Basically
as it was explained to me, currently there is no defined standard for defining
how a transaction receipt in an email was meant to look/work.
I’ve
had a few hours to think about this since the end of the conference and I think
this is brilliant.
Basically
when you make a purchase on Amazon.com and they send you an email for a
receipt…..whats in your inbox is just a natural language block of text (in
English or otherwise). I don’t know what was being proposed exactly (and if you
were at the event today and know who this is/was please reach out as I’d like
to quote him) but basically I’m imagining it to be some form of XBRL standard
that assigns in html markup the various components of the receipt
(seller/amount/date/item/tax/delivery charge etc) and that these can be
identified as said components “as well as text”.
Imagine
if when you viewed the text it looked like any other email but hidden in the
http was a markup accessible to your Outlook/Gmail/Thunderbird client that was
able to view the component details and then build a real time database of your
transactions. For example think of something like Mint but was a documented
standard available to everyone and accessed transactions at your inbox rather
than your “participating bank accounts”.
Would
make the Walmart purchase of Grabble look like receipts 1.0
Cheers,
Dean Collins
www.Cognation.net
