From globalization to fragmentation: pixelated payments Are cryptocurrencies part of the greatest tendency of the fragmentation of society? Getting fast returns effortlessly is what drives many modern investors, a longing for speed that has now caught the attention of the public. Everyone wants to participate in the fashion of cryptocurrencies after reading the stories that have headlines around the world about owners of bitcoins turned into millionaires. The digital gold rush is stronger than common sense and is leading many to ignore the risks associated with the Initial Coin Offers (ICO). Obviously, no investment is risk free, but in the case of ICOs the risk factor is taken to the extreme. The potential losses linked to ICOs should outweigh the expected benefits, which are literally as tangible as the investor's expectations. However, the opposite is happening: the greater the risk, the more candid souls want to get on the train. ICOs are not regulated and do not offer dividends: the hopes and expectations of investors are enough, for now, to sustain their attractiveness. What many do not seem to remember, especially novices in the world of financial operations, is that the investment in an ICO is basically a donation (which is also known as the "crowdsale" or collective sale) to an unknown person; without obligation. If the ICO does not prosper, as has already happened with many, the investment will disappear. But if we have already decided that we will take the risk in the hope of growing our investment, we have a new option: Arsenal, a football team of the Premier League, has reached an agreement with the gaming company CashBet to launch a new cryptocurrency: the CashBet Coin. After the versions of Kodak, Telegram and Venezuela's dubious petro, it seems that football leagues also want to explore the world of virtual payments. The most alarming is not necessarily who is rushing to get a piece of the pie, but how many are getting into the frenzy. I've taken a quick look at Coinlauncher to see how many ICOs are currently looking for funding, and the numbers are shocking. In the past, experts predicted the disappearance of checks, after cash and some have been speculating about the decline of credit cards due to the arrival of mobile payments. However, far from disappearing (although the popularity of checks has plummeted), these payment instruments have been coexisting progressively. Is the proliferation of cryptocurrencies contributing to a generalized fragmentation of payments? In the case of the Arsenal CashBet, the virtual currency is strictly for online bets. KodakCoin is a cryptocurrency for photographers. And if Starbucks decided to launch "FrappuccinoCoin", would it be available only to its customer base addicted to coffee? Through their current loyalty program, they already have access to 14.2 million loyal partners in the US. UU., So the creation of your own currency would not surprise me very much. If digitization was previously synonymous with globalization, now it is increasingly synonymous with fragmentation, since it connects small groups of people who share specific interests. And while this has become an important topic of debate especially in the field of social networking platforms, it seems to be extending to the payment ecosystem: we are focusing on a level of detail so extreme that it prevents us from contemplating the complete image and we only see a set of pixels, for better or for worse. * As I prepared to post this post on the blog, I stumbled in an entirely accidental way with an article about the interest of Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz in digital currencies, which reinforces my argument about the fragmentation of payments.
https://www.profitablegatetocontent.com/ww2c306q?key=464e51fd7506902a3c6634ccd763e968
