I believe that Bitcoin holds value as a form of 'good money' that is superior to any previously discovered or developed form of money.
The same way we can send and receive an email with anyone, anywhere, for free, or we can share a photo with anyone instantly for free, money will become these digital tokens, and we'll be able to do that with money.
New mobile-payment-based models are, in some ways, more secure. Because in a model like Circle's, for example, we never transmit your personal information or your financial credentials to the people you're paying.
Digital currency attempts to disrupt the financial industry, and it's potentially threatening to the existing financial services industry, but it doesn't have to be that way.
Bitcoin may herald the dawning of a new age in currency. It holds superior traits as a form of 'good money.' As a tangible form of asset (its core tangibility being its mathematical basis), it could become an incredibly important building block for the 21st century's global economy.
The blockchain is to money what SMTP is to email. It's an open way to move value around. Every existing player in this space - not just Venmo but also Google and Facebook and others - are all closed; they all want to work just within their own walled garden.
We use the block chain to share value, just like Internet protocol lets us share communication. Our goal is to build a global, international bank that is instant, global, and free. Sending payments should be as easy as sending an email.
There's all these proofs that go on of identity, of records, and they're quite non-digital. The blockchain innovation really allows us to take everything where there's record keeping, everything where there's trust around record keeping, and it allows us to make that digital, immutable, permanent, and global.
The big idea of, 'Hey, I can pay anyone, anywhere, with whatever digital wallet they have, and it just flows around the Internet' - that's on the horizon; that's how we built everything we do.
I want to help create the world's first global currency built on the Internet and built on open platforms and standards such as Bitcoin, and I want to build a financial services institution on top of that. That's what I'm doing with Circle.
I think there's a need for services that will make it easier for Chinese consumers to spend globally. The Bitcoin network could be an attractive solution.
The emergence of open Internet protocols for value exchange, today led by the global adoption of Bitcoin's blockchain, paves the way for value to move as freely as information and data move on the Internet today.
Our view is that consumer finance - what people think of as retail finance - that arena is ripe for disruption. Bitcoin is absolutely a core platform and asset format that we are dependent on to build this business.
We don't think there is any money to be made in payments anymore. The entire business model of extracting a toll or having time delays around the movement of value is going away completely.