Ciao!! Its been a while, I feel terrible for leaving all 2 of my loyal followers hangin. The past 12 months have been amazing, and in the little time I have had between being a new father, husband, and CEO, I have been doing a lot of thinking about what the future of payments, banking, and finance looks like. Some of it has been related to Routefusion and how I can ensure we are always staying ahead of the curve, some has been to ensure my family and I are securing our financial future with all of the amazing financial developments happening in the world, and the rest has been so I can write great blog posts that hopefully drive some traffic to Routefusion! In all of my thoughts, one thing is continuing to come up over and over again, and that is fintech/crypto/tokenization, how it is the future, and how it always has been. Below are going to be some quick thoughts, enjoy!

‍USDC and the Tokenization of Currencies is Going to Change the World

USDC and the tokenization of currencies is the future. Money will continue to flow between wallets and currencies, but it will no longer flow through the current financial systems that we have all grown accustomed to. There are two ways I think we can go.

The First Possible Way

More and more currencies will continue to tokenize; i.e. JPY will turn into JPYC, or GBP will turn into GBPC. When I send USDC to a person in the UK, it will auto-convert to GBPC, with no exchange rate markup, and it will settle near-instant. The beneficiary of the GBPC will receive it in their "wallet" of choice. Later that day they will go to the gas station to fill up their car, instead of whipping out a credit card, they will whip out a QR code that is linked to their GBPC wallet and pay with that. All of this happens outside of any traditional banking/payments system, it happens through decentralized networks and protocols where fees, etc are at a minimum. The government has no control over it, and we are able to transact as humans were meant to.

The Second Way I See this Playing Out

Rather than having current currencies tokenize, we have one currency such as USDC or DAI that is stable, which we peg everything to. The same scenario above applies, but rather than doing any type of currency conversion, we just send USDC to USDC, and then when we go to the gas station, everything works the same. TBH this is the future that is less complicated, and what we will want to push towards, but unfortunately, I think we have so many preconceived notions that every country needs their own currency, I just don’t see this happening.

What about Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc?

I don’t think Bitcoin or Ethereum are going anywhere. I think Bitcoin and Ethereum will become new types of "intermediaries" for a new tokenized world we live in. What does this mean? Ethereum is never going away because we need it to create tokens or smart contracts, so it becomes a utility security in which people trade and build off of. Bitcoin is the Gold standard for all crypto. Bitcoin is and will always be the king. When someone wants to invest in a security they will immediately think of Bitcoin first. Hopefully bitcoin semi-stabilizes to a point where we can use it as an intermediary, i.e. to trade in and out of quickly for currency conversions, etc. There is a world where BTC becomes a defacto currency that we use to pay for everything, BUT, the collective amount of mindshare that needs to happen across the world for this to happen seems slim, maybe in the next 100 years that changes, but for purposes of this article I’m thinking in my lifetime, and in my lifetime I think BTC stays an intermediary security or investment vehicle.

Go Deeper Into Securities...

I don’t know how deep I can really go, as I am not an expert in this space, but I think the future of securities or stocks that we know of today will be much more decentralized tomorrow. Much like we saw with ICO's, I believe more and more companies will begin offering a tokenized asset of themselves in the future without the regulation of the government coming down on them. I think consumers will become much more educated, and new decentralized consortiums (is this even possible) will spin up to provide guidelines and how to's, but ultimately the power will live with the people.

Fast forward 10 years... We now have a world in which the majority of our fiat currency has been converted into USDC type tokens, most people are transacting over new networks outside of Visa and Mastercard, cross-border payments look NOTHING like they do today, startups are able to raise money in ways that have never been possible, innovation is at a peak, global poverty is shrinking before our eyes, BUT one question looms...

Where is Routefusion in All of This?

Today Routefusion is making cross-border payments as easy as accepting a credit card payment. We are decentralized by nature, as we partner with many banks, liquidity providers, and local payment methods. We are constantly evolving and we will always push the boundaries in the payments and banking world to let our customers build the future of tomorrow. If the future truly is tokens and crypto, Routefusion will add new ways to accept and make payments using those rails. Routefusion will never hold our noses up to what the future looks like, we will let our customers and their customers show us what it looks like.

Needless to say, I AM EXCITED ABOUT THE FUTURE!!!!!!