As part of a wide-ranging discussion with SFOX , the founder of the BTCC exchange, current CSO of Blockstream and Magical Crypto Friend, Samson Mow, has given his opinion on the status of Bitcoin and the advantages of its nascent Lightning Network.
While, through projects such as its attention-grabbing Satellite program, Blockstream has looked to support and reinforce the Bitcoin network, when Mow was asked about how he uses the cryptocurrency in real life, his reply his reply was short:
“I don’t,” he told the interviewer. “I use credit cards!”
Mow was keen that his statements were not misinterpreted, however. “I’ve said this before, and people have twisted it around and said I hate Bitcoin,” he stressed, “but Bitcoin is bad for payments.“. “It’s more of a store of value and a medium of wealth transfer,” he qualified.
He then went on to explain some of his philosophical feelings about Bitcoin, cryptocurrency and how it will develop.
We generally use things however we want, right? We use a metal, which is gold, for storing wealth and value transfer. We use paper for money, too. Why do we use paper? It’s not really good: you can burn it or shred it. But in general, we just use things how we want to use them. Just because Bitcoin is information, it doesn’t really change that.
“Bitcoin is superior in all these aspects,” he concluded, “so it makes sense why we decided to treat this certain information as if it were money because it’s really better in every single way.”
However, he believes, when twinned to an effective fast transaction network such as promised by Lightning, it truly becomes money. Mow added:
You can use it for payments too, with Lightning, and that changes the whole dynamic. Now if you’re transacting bitcoin over Lightning, you’re not doing it on credit and the fees are almost zero. So it does change the whole equation a lot.
Blockstream, for whom Mow is Chief Strategy Office, is working on a Lightning-compatible sidechain product called Liquid, aimed at reducing latency in Bitcoin transfers between exchanges. That also features an Issue Assets feature, that allows its members to tokenise a range of assets, including fiat currencies and transfer them between nodes away from the delays of the main Bitcoin chain.
“You don’t design a payment system that takes 10 minutes to settle on average.” he says. “This is why people want to use Liquid for two-minute full settlement: it’s one-minute block times and about two minutes for settlement. So if I’m wiring money to an exchange, I know, ‘Okay, I’m going to have my confirmation in a minute, and it’s going to settle in two.’ That’s way better if you’re trying to arb or trade than sending it and waiting for six confirmations, which could be an hour or maybe more.”
Featured image via Blockstream/Pixabay
