I used to move millions of EUR/USD/GBP around the world through multiple bank accounts on a weekly basis as part of my previous jobs in both investment and commercial banking. Depending on the type of accounts and clients (usually other banks) the actual movement of funds did not take the 3-4 working days as is commonly touted by high-street bankers.

The actual time it takes for most funds to transfer is the time taken for a SWIFT / fax/ TELEX  message to be delivered (with its own security procedures), a banker’s authorisation, and the few key strokes to enter the change in the ledger. In an efficient office, with the infrastructure to quickly check the credit of clients, the compliance of the transfer (i.e. the sender/ beneficiary are not blacklisted etc.) this process could take a mere 10 minutes (the same time as a Bitcoin confirmation). BUT who has this “efficient office”? with the high volume world-wide transactions the time your transaction request is send it is probably just one in a constantly growing to-do-tray! What if there were robots/ computers to do this request, confirmation and ledger update for you? That is exactly what the infrastructure of Bitcoin enables. Getting robot/ computers to do mundane tasks have been around for a while now. Take a modern auto mobile production line, sure it can do things quicker, with less human-error, and less down-time. Yet the Bitcoin “quicker” is actually debatable, as Bitcoin does not go through the authorisation, compliance, and blacklist checks that regulated banks are supposed to (except HSBC). What Bitcoin does today is the equivalent of building a car without safety checks. Bitcoin skips a few steps so of course it is going to do things quicker; one reason why Bitcoin does this is because it is built to exist in a perfect, black-list-free, and error-free world as programmers wishfully but unrealistically intended. If a compliance bolt-on could be somehow added to the Bitcoin infrastructure then I am sure that at least the governments would be happier.

Bitcoin is something that humans need to interact with therefore from a realistic perspective, not an perfect-world perspective we argue the case that Bitcoin is a marvellous proof of concept, core-infrastructure, yet more development is need for real useful majority usage (a.k.a. crossing the chasm). I have seen first-hand the request of transfer of funds worth millions of USD only to be recalled later whether due to miscommunication, auto-fill “typo”, or human-error. What happened later was some form of saving grace or fund reversal and worse cases have been fines or interest charges, a few percent of the total. These mistakes were performed by paid, seasoned, professionals/ bankers. Now if we allow the market/ public control the dealings of fund transfer with the Bitcoin infrastructure it is empowering everyone to become a bank manager. Great! more power the better, right? Well, yes if you are also willing to shoulder the responsibility. There are reasons why we outsource things to others- greater expertise, greater responsibility or to reduce risks yet one of the liberating characteristics of Bitcoin is to give us the ability to control our own money “in-house”. Not a bad thing, for those who want it, for those that feel that the current banking system is too expensive or too limiting. Now also consider the other half of the transaction… the beneficiary/ payee/ vendor, is he someone you trust or an unknown online? why are you giving him you Bitcoin? are you hoping to get something in return? Banks, compliance officers, black-lists all play a part in ensuring trustworthy exchanges.

Bitcoin payments are irreversible which is great in a perfect world, if all vendors are trustworthy and also if humans never made a mistake, after all, we are now all empowered to shoulder the responsibility which includes the fines and loses. Not being able to separate man from his nature apps or policies can be made to address the trustworthy-ness of vendors and the inevitability of errors if not but a safety net for those who are getting used to their new roles as bank managers.

Trust on the other hand is not in short supply if you know where to look. Many people want to provide a legitimate good or service for a price. Therefore in conjunction with Bitcoin things like rating sites or market forums may also proliferate in order to build market trust. On the other hand, the already established rating sites could use this advantage to act as an intermediary for referring customers to highly rated/ trusted sites (as I already hypothesised here).

Bitcoin, at the end of the day is bare-bones. If you want compliance, legality, trust and something to protect against mistakes then a whole host of policies, bolt-ons, apps, companies and websites can be used to flesh Bitcoin out for the common user. From the stand point of in-store transactions such as for a coffee etc. there seems to be enough trust and legitimacy in this exchange to showcase the benefits of Bitcoin without these added apps. Yet I do not see the reason to do so, regular cash transaction would be at no disadvantage or extra expense and neither is a debit card transaction.  There is no added benefit to using Bitcoin in this instance, instead, one should segment the types of goods and services in which using Bitcoins would have an advantage (e.g. online mirco-payments, large payments etc.) and in these instances it is very possible that the additional “safety nets” hypothesised above would  be very useful to help Bitcoin users along in the real world.