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For an apples to apples comparison, you must start with the premise that Bitcoin is a platform. M-Pesa, built on top of multiple platforms, is a company. If you

For an apples to apples comparison, you must start with the premise that Bitcoin is a platform. M-Pesa, built on top of multiple platforms, is a company. If you want a starting point as a comparison between between the two, you should start the clock on M-Pesa back to the origin of cell towers (platform #1) followed by SMS (platform #2). It was only when these two technologies matured that M-Pesa (a company) became possible.

jusben1369 13y ago
I feel like you're stretching pretty hard here. Taking your second point first, why wouldn't we turn back the clock for bitcoin then to the "start" of the internet? And the author here, while sighting M-Pesa, references other new payment types too like PayPal which feels closer to Bitcoin (independent exchange mechanism that can be pulled out in a hard currency) when stating that Bitcoin is well behind the curve of where it needs to be.
- brianfitz 13y ago
  Paypal is another company, based on existing platforms. Their success was directly tied to their ability to predict fraud and take real-time decisions to block or, at times allow, a high risk transaction to process (assuming their algorithm determined the cost of blocking the transaction was greater than allowing it to go through and issuing a refund). People believe their differentiator was payment processing, but its this very belief that allowed them to kill off their competition. If you view Bitcoin as similar to PayPal, then that is at the heart of why we view this issue differently. I would compare Bitcoin much more closely to HTTP, or other protocols -- and PayPal as being akin to BitPay. When Bitcoin is compared to companies built on top of existing protocols and platforms, then I believe the premise is misguided. M-Pesa's success is directly tied to cheap mobile airtime. In Malawi, I purchased a new cellphone with minutes for $12 USD, and I was paying the airport rate. The same principal goes for Kenya -- there were M-Pesa booths everywhere I went in Nairobi, but only because of the amazing uptake of basic cell phones mostly used for SMS. Without that mature platform, the business could never survive. Bitcoin could ultimately fail, but not due to the adoption curve as outlined in the article.

jusben1369 13y ago

I feel like you're stretching pretty hard here. Taking your second point first, why wouldn't we turn back the clock for bitcoin then to the "start" of the internet? And the author here, while sighting M-Pesa, references other new payment types too like PayPal which feels closer to Bitcoin (independent exchange mechanism that can be pulled out in a hard currency) when stating that Bitcoin is well behind the curve of where it needs to be.

brianfitz 13y ago
Paypal is another company, based on existing platforms. Their success was directly tied to their ability to predict fraud and take real-time decisions to block or, at times allow, a high risk transaction to process (assuming their algorithm determined the cost of blocking the transaction was greater than allowing it to go through and issuing a refund). People believe their differentiator was payment processing, but its this very belief that allowed them to kill off their competition. If you view Bitcoin as similar to PayPal, then that is at the heart of why we view this issue differently. I would compare Bitcoin much more closely to HTTP, or other protocols -- and PayPal as being akin to BitPay. When Bitcoin is compared to companies built on top of existing protocols and platforms, then I believe the premise is misguided. M-Pesa's success is directly tied to cheap mobile airtime. In Malawi, I purchased a new cellphone with minutes for $12 USD, and I was paying the airport rate. The same principal goes for Kenya -- there were M-Pesa booths everywhere I went in Nairobi, but only because of the amazing uptake of basic cell phones mostly used for SMS. Without that mature platform, the business could never survive. Bitcoin could ultimately fail, but not due to the adoption curve as outlined in the article.