The plenary session was opened by the Head of Bitcoin Foundation Jon Matonis, who told about the prospects of this most popular crypto-currency in the world.
The Executive Director and the Board Member of Bitcoin Foundation paid attention of the forum participants to the advantages provided by the basic principle of the crypto-currency – decentralisation. “This is an absolutely new paradigm of the financial system,” noted Mr Matonis.
According to the speaker, the absence of traditional issuers and regulators allows holders of such currency to retain full control over their assets in any situation and be free from any restrictions, interference of third parties and monetary voluntarism. This is topical for daily activities and especially during crisis situations when access to funds may be restricted.
As the benefits of the new currency, Jon Matonis named its high technological protection from fraud and hackers, absence of inflation, a possibility of making limitless instant payments, the practically zero cost of processing, free online trade in any countries, including African states where many residents have no bank accounts. “It is obvious today that the future is for mobile payments and bitcoin is an ideal ready instrument for this,” said Mr Matonis.
The Head of Bitcoin Foundation is convinced that the new currency is principally ready for competing with traditional payment instruments. He provided the fact that during the recent five years the market capitalisation of bitcoins was increasing more than tenfold annually and now is estimated as USD 7 billion. Every year the number of bitcoin wallets increases by more than eight times. Moreover, if in 2009, when first bitcoins appeared, payments by them were restricted, now they are relatively widely accepted for payment in different countries. The quantitative turnover of bitcoins, according to Matonis, has already surpassed the turnover of Western Union and approaches volumes of the PayPal payment system. “We are rapidly moving towards financial mainstream,” concluded Mr Matonis.
Today there are also such issues discussed at
eCom21 as topical tendencies in the field of legislation, supervision and control with regard to electronic money, technological aspects and issues of reliability of virtual settlements.
Among the speakers of the second day of the forum, there are representatives of the Central Bank and the regulator of the securities market of Cyprus, the Big Four of auditing companies, Rietumu Bank, Russian association “Electronic Money”, ECommPay, DEAC, RBK Money, Lattelecom, TransactPro, PaySysConsultancy, Drihem & Co and other leaders of the market.
About 450 guests from 30 countries take part in the eCom21 conference. The general partner of the forum is EcommPay – the international provider of payment solutions. The strategic partner is the first licensed issuer of e-money in Latvia TransactPro.
The venue of the eCom21 conference is the Radisson Blu Latvia hotel in the centre of the Latvian capital city. Eleonora Gailisha Mass Media and Public Relations
Phone: +371-67020506
Fax: +371-67020563
E-mail:
egailisha@rietumu.lv
