Blockchain technology goes mainstream: How to break down barriers to digital currency acceptance

Last week, leading experts in the blockchain industry gathered at the Coinsbank networking event on the Turkish Riviera to discuss current issues in the industry. Coinsbank CEO Ronny Boesing described the event as a platform for connecting people who are using blockchain to change the world.

The theme of this blockchain gathering is "Strengthening blockchain enterprise connections to make blockchain technology mainstream." Attendees from all over the world, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Finland, Germany, India, Latvia, Ukraine, Argentina, Russia, Serbia and Turkey, are trying to answer a very difficult question: "What is the way to break down the barriers that prevent people from accepting digital currencies?"

Coinsbank: Revolutionizing the way people exchange value

Boesing sees Coinsbank as a "new bank on the blockchain" that provides customers with a more secure system. The platform started with Bitcoin trading operations and has now developed to the level of traditional banks using blockchain. They are very concerned about the safety and convenience of using digital currencies for customers, and recently they are introducing a new type of secure wallet with multi-signature hardware.

Accessing this wallet is similar to accessing a safe deposit box at a bank: no one except the customer can get access to the money. In order to perform any operation, two keys are required - one key is kept by the customer and the other key is kept by the bank. Without the user's key, no one else can threaten the safety of the customer's property.

The bank also plans to provide loans to customers in case they encounter difficulties in growing their business, personal financial needs, unforeseen expenses, and urgent funds. In addition, the secure cryptocurrency wallet can also be used as a credit card when fiat currency is not exchanged for digital currency.

Boesing concluded that these two initiatives (secure wallet and lending possibilities) are turning Coinsbank into a personalized bank on the blockchain. Regarding other future developments, Coinsbank is working on solutions for enterprises that will add Live Support to its product.

QIWI: Enabling consumers and merchants to use and accept electronic payments

At the blockchain meetup, another representative from QIWI, a well-known Russian payment service provider, said that the best way to break down the barriers that prevent people from accepting digital currencies is to enable services related to physical payments to be completed through online and mobile channels.

The company has deployed more than 16.2 million virtual wallets and 164,000 nodes and terminals, enabling merchants to accept more than 67 billion rubles in cash and electronic payments each month.

"QIWI is developing and testing blockchain projects and ideas that can be directly applied to the core payment market," said Sergey Solonin, CEO of QIWI. "QIWI is working closely with national regulators and domestic financial institutions to pave the way for the application of blockchain technology in the market. At the same time, we are also in the stage of national integration. We are very excited about the distributed performance and innovative shared ledger technology, which can help us update and improve the underlying technology of our core business."

At the same time, QIWI is evaluating the possibilities offered by blockchain and digital currencies, understanding the market and its drivers, exploring and testing different products, looking for applicable cases and implementing them; but in the end it is equally important to explain to regulators that cryptocurrencies are not dangerous but an opportunity, which is one of the reasons why QIWI recently joined the R3 blockchain alliance.

Genesis Mining: Proof of Work is a Suitable Solution

Genesis Mining, a bitcoin mining company founded in 2013, believes that breaking down the barriers that prevent cryptocurrency from becoming mainstream first requires a secure and trusted consensus system.

“Mining is by far the best consensus system for blockchain,” said Marco Streng, CEO of Genesis Mining. “Miners secure the blockchain, ensuring a reliable network of transactions, and they receive block rewards.”

It is important to understand that digital currency is a self-service network, and its underlying technology blockchain depends on the use case. "Specific features such as censorship resistance and trustlessness have certain costs, but they also create an innovative industry sector," Streng continued. "For Bitcoin, Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies, their original function is to store value as currency. These values ​​(user payments) are confirmed by network nodes (miners) and packaged into the ledger. Exchange services are the gateway to the world market."

Not long ago, Genesis Mining successfully processed the first peer-to-peer Bitcoin transaction in space via a weather balloon. The company and its team stated that this project proved that Bitcoin has unlimited potential and that it has the ability to process transactions anywhere in the world, including in space.