{"id":137343,"date":"2023-09-02T05:58:28","date_gmt":"2023-09-02T00:28:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/?p=137343"},"modified":"2023-09-02T05:58:28","modified_gmt":"2023-09-02T00:28:28","slug":"fintech-in-the-front-defi-in-the-back-cryptos-quiet-revolution-is-underway-crypto-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/fintech-in-the-front-defi-in-the-back-cryptos-quiet-revolution-is-underway-crypto-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Fintech in the Front, DeFi in the Back\u2014Crypto’s Quiet Revolution Is Underway – Crypto News"},"content":{"rendered":"
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PayPal\u2019s stablecoin rollout<\/a> highlights a revived trend in the crypto industry.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s one that captured Wall Street\u2019s imagination since 2016<\/a>, promising speedy settlement times and lower backroom overhead. The so-called blockchain revolution: newer, cheaper rails for the financial system.<\/p>\n

That line of argument stopped making headlines amid a long and cold crypto winter followed by an uptick in meme coins<\/a>, yield farming<\/a>, and the sector\u2019s equally powerful memetic force of getting rich quickly.<\/p>\n

With Bitcoin<\/a><\/span> still eons off its all-time highs, the tides appear to be changing though. And those financial rails are now getting that fresh coating of paint the industry has promised for the last seven years.<\/p>\n

From Visa cards to digital dollars, crypto is slowly rewiring the everyday financial experience right before users’ eyes.<\/p>\n

Gnosis, for example, recently launched<\/a> the Gnosis Card, which behaves precisely like a traditional Visa card except that it draws from users\u2019 self-custodial crypto wallets. Alongside the card, the crypto firm also launched Gnosis Pay, a PayPal<\/a><\/span> equivalent of sorts that makes it easier for the weird world of crypto to better integrate with current financial networks.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat’s one way to look at it for sure,\u201d Gnosis co-founder Stefan George told Decrypt<\/i> of the PayPal comparison. \u201cWe\u2019re connecting the payment rails\u2014the old rails and new rails\u2014to make it really easy for you. Kind of what PayPal did to make online transfers very easy. Now, we do it for crypto.\u201d<\/p>\n

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I remember the time when great foreign exchange rates were a reason to switch to neobanks. Now compare Revolut vs @CoWSwap<\/a> on Gnosis. Together with @gnosispay<\/a>, every wallet can build a better onchain neobank! pic.twitter.com\/WQl3Vh0KuZ<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Martin K\u00f6ppelmann \ud83e\udd89\ud83d\udcb3 (@koeppelmann) August 12, 2023<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

Elsewhere, Monerium quietly launched its fully regulated euro-pegged stablecoin<\/a><\/span>. EURe even comes with an IBAN, Europe\u2019s equivalent of a SWIFT code, that lets users fling money back and forth seamlessly. They\u2019ve been able to do this thanks to acquiring<\/a> Europe\u2019s e-money license back in 2019.<\/p>\n

Basically, you\u2019d never know if the euros you\u2019ve just received were anything other than the euros you\u2019ve always been accepting.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can seamlessly go from off-chain fiat in the bank system, to on-chain fiat on the chains we support,\u201d Monerium CTO and co-founder Gisli Kristjansson told Decrypt<\/i>. \u201c\u20ac11 trillion in the banking system can freely flow like water onto a blockchain, and then to any chain, and then back into the banking system.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, the common factor linking Monerium\u2019s and Gnosis\u2019 new offerings is that users may not even be aware that they\u2019re using crypto.<\/p>\n

From paying for groceries with a Visa card or paying back a friend for dinner, there\u2019s very little that has changed from the traditional legacy banking experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can finally build something that is exactly the same experience,\u201d George said. \u201cWe can finally ask the question, \u2018Why would users actually use Web3?\u2019 Previously, you can only say, \u2018I would not use Web3 because the user experience sucks.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

In many ways, the crypto revolution closely resembles the fintech revolution and the arrival of Revolut, N26, and a host of neobanks.<\/p>\n

The Gnosis co-founder says, though, that crypto\u2019s offering is much, much different.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause it’s permissionless innovation, we basically have a neobank that has a stable interface that allows anyone to extend the offering of what this bank can afford to their users, offering perfect competition on this level,\u201d he told Decrypt<\/i>. \u201cThey now need to offer something that’s much, much better than what Revolut or N26 has.\u201d<\/p>\n

In this way, crypto emerges less as a means for Zoomers to get mega-rich flipping low-cap jpegs<\/a>, and more as a piece of software open to any business to build upon.<\/p>\n

The competition to drop costs and lure more users becomes all the fiercer.<\/p>\n

Assuming, of course, that regulators can catch up.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

A regulatory hurdle, not a technical one<\/h2>\n

The arrival of Monerium\u2019s euro stablecoin finally puts the project on the map.<\/p>\n

But that doesn\u2019t mean the team wasn\u2019t hard at work first acquiring that pesky e-money<\/a> license in 2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt took us two years to convince the regulators that the license, that existed then for like 18 years, was applicable to public blockchains,\u201d the Monerium CTO said. \u201cAnd it was a massive thing, not just from a technical standpoint, but from a regulatory standpoint.\u201d<\/p>\n

This was part of the stablecoin issuer\u2019s strategy, which entailed first gathering regulatory clearance, a key hurdle for meeting mainstream adoption.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can either remain a fringe technology for fringe groups, or this can rewrite the financial infrastructure and Internet markets,\u201d Kristjansson told Decrypt<\/i>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also a key component of the Gnosis team\u2019s current strategy. It can be tricky, however, because as regulators aim to protect users, this protection often gets interpreted differently between different projects.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing close to regulators is actually super high priority,\u201d said George. \u201cThen we can define the rules which qualify what the regulator wants.\u201d<\/p>\n

One example of what this could look like revolves around constantly inputting tedious know-your-customer (KYC) details with each financial interaction.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s super annoying for users to always go from KYC with every additional service and type in all these details again, and again, and again,\u201d he said. \u201cWe developed a platform that allows users to passport that information to any of the other providers.\u201d<\/p>\n

This service is in partnership<\/a> with another firm called Fractal and, naturally, decentralizes the whole process. Another identity platform called Out DID leverages zero-knowledge proofs<\/a> to execute the same function with an eye to privacy.<\/p>\n

Educating regulators on this new tooling is now the key task, says George.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost regulators want to do good things,\u201d he said. \u201cThey don’t want to harm anyone. They want to actually try to protect users. But we have to educate them.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Stay on top of crypto news, get daily updates in your inbox.<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PayPal\u2019s stablecoin rollout highlights a revived trend in the crypto industry. It\u2019s one that captured Wall Street\u2019s imagination since 2016, promising speedy settlement times and lower backroom overhead. The so-called blockchain revolution: newer, cheaper rails for the financial system. That line of argument stopped making headlines amid a long and cold crypto winter followed by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137344,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[230,225,221,227,226,228,229,60,223,224,222],"class_list":["post-137343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cryptocurrency","tag-brave","tag-coinbase","tag-crypto","tag-decentralised","tag-decentralized","tag-decentralized-exchange","tag-erc-20","tag-featured","tag-meme-coin","tag-robinhood","tag-solana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137343"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137343\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":148457,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137343\/revisions\/148457"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}