Amazon, the world’s largest store, is still lagging behind when it comes to new technology and new payment methods.
Crypto, whatever its faults, is nevertheless a global savior when it comes to trading.
Those who may be unbanked or otherwise locked out can still join the global digital economy by mining or buying cryptocurrency.
This is why many online businesses are adopting it. For example, BitPay counts more than 10,000 merchants. Since 2011, they have processed 5 billion dollars in 10 million transactions.
Those are big numbers, but not necessarily for a mammoth like Amazon. On the other hand, Amazon is so big that a rare occurrence for a local store can be a huge audience for Amazon.
There are people who want privacy for whatever reason. Why should they give the card details to hackable Amazon?
There are people who have cryptocurrency but no fiat or not enough to pay. Rare, but still, Amazon is massive.
The cryptocurrency market is also reaching a reasonable size. About 20% of Americans currently own cryptocurrency. Probably the same for Europeans.
Offering cryptocurrency as an option may be fairer for customer convenience. Even if the vast majority don’t use it, turning what might be a bad experience on the outside into a cool new cryptocurrency payment experience can be more valuable than the raw data suggests.
This applies to all online businesses. Especially airlines that are global. For example, there is no excuse for an entity like WizzAir not to accept cryptocurrency.
But in Amazon’s case, it’s not about the customers, the experience, or even how many people can use it. This is purely politics.
Dum leads Monopoly Blinds
“There has to be trust,” says Timothy Bray, who as vice president led efforts at Amazon Web Services (AWS) from 2014 to 2020, the era of cryptocurrency’s rise.
It credits itself with essentially sabotaging Amazon when it comes to blockchain, let alone cryptocurrency.
And from this, he proves why the statement that we must have faith about the technology in question is wrong, because we must believe that all humans have the right answer to it. Trust in authority is thus a mistake.
Of course, we must have some basic trust or default assumption that the new neighbor is a normal friendly person, or that someone is not going to take our towel if we go diving at the beach, or for those crossing the street.
However, we should not trust Bray with supreme knowledge of all things. Nor should we believe that he is not blindly biased. Perhaps too big an ego for the good of Amazon, which he left in 2020, etc.
We shouldn’t necessarily trust accounting matters, so we have audits.
Sure, up to a point. While totally insecure, it sure is better when it comes to payment technology, isn’t it.
But Bray doesn’t have much work experience with money itself or payment systems, so his opinions and decisions are based more on ancillary aspects.
He is described as an environmentalist and political activist. So his main point of view probably starts with “I don’t want it to work” and maybe “I don’t care if it works”.
More important to him is this idea in his head that crypto is somehow these fringe libertarians, very opposite spectrum to him, probably closer to communists.
“Obviously, we’ve also spoken to several leading lights from the crypto scene. It wasn’t very helpful because they were mostly concerned with the aspects of government regulation and contract law that concerned you; they all had a subtle flavor of libertarianism,” he says.
This dismissal is his entire statement, and perhaps not so unfair to the people who claimed to speak on behalf of bitcoin when he met with them in 2014.
It was an environment where the public was very angry with the government. Endless wars were raging in the Middle East. There was a lot of darkness indeed, and there was a revolt among technologists over both Wikileaks and Snowden and Brexit and Trump.
But bitcoin has nothing to do with the government. Bitcoin may have a relationship with the Fed, although cryptocurrency can be designed more broadly, but including a system like the Fed, and bitcoin has a relationship with banks.
While many argue that banks are taking over the government, cryptocurrency is two different things, essentially an upgrade from a paper-based monetary system to a native digitally coded monetary and financial system.
Rejecting this aspect, technology, is objectively wrong. One can say what they want about many things, but bitcoin solves the problem of double spending.
It is, objectively speaking, a technological innovation and more in its raw form than incremental improvement.
Therefore, whether it’s Bray, Amazon, or whoever, they don’t have the luxury of giving up on technology, because our society, while hierarchical, is decentralized enough that every person has a choice in everything. at all times.
If the technology has a use, those who use it will use it. Blockchain can be used in systems that require very high levels of security, such as the military, or in systems where data is collected digitally through sensors where data accuracy is key.
Crypto is mainly used as an alternative or backup for global payments. This may involve bypassing the government, such as capital controls. This could include the government using it to pay off whistleblowers. The card doesn’t work for whatever reason, as this could include some ordinary person using it.
That’s why someone can’t be ignored because the statement “this person claims that the rate of crypto business that is actually a Ponzi is not rounded to 100%” is patently false, because cryptocurrency has a use for global payments.
But someone like Bray will probably never change his mind. It is infected with blind politics where emotions and rigidity often prevail over rationalism.
An entity like Amazon cannot have such views, especially when it goes against 20% of the public and better off.
Amazon is simply a database that can be changed very easily, and if they put policies into their routine business for unreasonable reasons, change is inevitable.
Because we cannot have a situation where there are essentially ‘hater’ businesses. It is not for Amazon to dictate which payment method users prefer. Of course it’s their choice whether to provide it or not, but it’s also the users’ choice to start hating Amazon.
This diversion of policy enforcement and the apolitical issues we deal with payment technology must end if Amazon is to remain relevant for the long term.
Because we assumed they didn’t like crypto. But it is quite another thing to confirm it in such clear language.
If you’re going to go against an entire technology and 20% of the public, you better be right.