A couple thoughts on Money and Transactions have been fluttering in my mind. Until tonight, I've been out experiencing my first Sibos, International Banking convention. It's been a wild mix of activities, observations and surprises.
Incumbents and Start-ups: They need to work together. I'm concerned with the disruption coming from start-up land because I know how start-ups are run. I'm a start-up girl. I love the risk, the challenge of building a new idea, making it real, taking it to market, to the people. Building something, a beta, launching, rapid product development. I know how long it takes for good QA cycles (even with Agile development) - and when we're talking about about a living infrastructure the world depends on - this is not something I want left up to my wonderful, disruptive start-up entrepreneurs. There are serious risks, liability. The necessary requirements for up time and consistency would kill a start-up.
We watch consumers get pissed on social media with any little thing not perfect? Wait till their finances get as messed up as their airline travel. Not a pretty sight. Start-ups and the Big Financial Incumbents need to work together. To do what they do best, so they can keep doing what they do best. To help each other innovate, create/build standards and infrastruture and provide solid, risk reliant financial products and services. There is a place for both the start-up and the incumbent in our new world.
The current system doesn't deserve to be destroyed. Just because it's had some major problems recently, doesn't mean it should be killed. I DO NOT Believe the existing money system is going away. We are BUILDING upon the existing system. The existing system is a FOUNDATION upon which more value is being created. These emerging things could not emerge without prior existence of our current system. Just as our current system evolved out of the previous one.
This is not a case where the phoenix should be immolated only to rise again. Let's create a new metaphor - joining the strength of the past, building upon this strength and pushing, expanding, extending it out into the unknown, the impossible - and bring our hands back full of start-up ideas for an expanding ecosystem. This is pragmatic futures work.
Embrace and extend. I use the not so loved metaphor to explain my thoughts on what I prefer to see happen with the current system/situation. Incumbents embrace these new systems/concepts/ideas and extend the infrastructure into these new area. (There's a place for start-ups too.)
Market Externalities. Triple Bottom Line. Encoding a new language. Creating the interface to plug currently understood non-financial values/transactions into the market system. Giving/Letting the market system do what it does best. Loosen the bonds holding back the flow of currency.
There is no black and white. All bets are off. We are traversing new ground (while we create it in front of us - just as Iron Council's railroad tracks). Drop your judgements, your expectations, your assumptions. Do not indulge in the dystopian. Challenge yourself to join me (and a less sarcastic Candide) in the Protopian Flipside: a thriving ecosystem of possibilities, waiting to be plucked and incubated into reality. Further refining. The most magical of all: creating a lot of somethings from "nothing." Creating value. Creating the infrastruture for this value to participate in the system.
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