Two students are talking to each other, during a lecture.
“I can’t believe it, man. It’s up 400%” says one. “I know! I can’t believe it either, up 400%!” says the other. The professor stops writing on the whiteboard, turns around, and shouts at them.
“Nothing which goes up by 400% that quickly is a good investment! I’m so tired of hearing about Bitcoin this and Bitcoin that!”.
One of the students replies; “We were talking about the cost of college tuition since 1990!”.
Phillip Inman, the economics editor of the U.K.’s Observer newspaper, confirmed last month what everyone knew. “The world’s best-known currency, Bitcoin, jumped above $17,000 to a three-year high, as a growing number of investors backed it as an alternative to other assets,” he wrote.
Inman quoted the currency analyst at JP Morgan, who explained “the virus crisis is propagating the reassessment of Bitcoin. There is a reassessment about its value here as an alternative currency; as an alternative to gold”.
This follows on from a month ago when PayPal announced it would be opening its network to cryptocurrencies headed by Bitcoin, which rose by nearly half since PayPal’s move.
However, the most significant of all the quotes from financial experts, came from the investment director at AJ Bell; “The ultimate endorsement of crypto is whether you can buy your groceries with it and pay taxes with it. That would be the ultimate acceptance”.
Enter ForumPay, the endorsement to which AJ Bell may be referring. ForumPay allows crypto enthusiasts, through their crypto wallets – an estimated 140 million people around the globe – to use their currency to purchase everyday goods and services and whereby those cryptocurrencies are instantly exchanged to the merchant’s preferred currency at the time and point of sale. ForumPay is one of Bill Erbey’s most recent and exciting adventures, giving people the easy ability to use their cryptocurrencies for paying their bills and giving business owners the advantage of attracting new customers without the worry of what currency their customers are using.
It was obvious to Bill that people couldn’t just walk into a store and buy a loaf of bread or a bunch of flowers with crypto. In order to make it a true currency – a practical currency – he needed to be able to invent a way where people could use crypto, in a retail environment for starters.
“Imagine a customer comes into your store and asks to pay you for a $100 item with a bushel of apples. As a merchant, you probably don’t accept apples as a form of currency. However, if a third party – ForumPay – were to take those apples and give you the $100, the apples become irrelevant. ForumPay does that for the crypto consumer and the traditional merchant,” Joshua Tate, CEO of ForumPay said.
According to Tate, ForumPay “set out to provide a technology that would allow for payments to happen in everyday life for both customers and merchants, via crypto. It’s a joining of two worlds; of cryptocurrency and the traditional world”. Tate highlights the fact that big credit card institutions involve six people in any transaction.”
“With ForumPay there are only three; you have the consumer, you have ForumPay and you have the merchant. It’s that simple, it’s that direct, and for those who understand the technology, it also takes place on the actual blockchain, which means risk of chargebacks is eliminated and traditional identity theft concerns are alleviated”.
ForumPay recently announced that it was bringing multiple point-of-sale solutions, which allowed crypto customers and businesses to come together for ‘seamless and instant transactions’.
Tate says that the Coronavirus pandemic has increased the embracing of digital currency and cites two major factors.
“First, the explosive growth in fiat currency causing people to be concerned with the value of the dollar, euro, etc.”. “Secondly”, says Tate, “the necessity to limit physical contact between people, which digital currency solves, as bills and payments are settled through scanning with no physical contact.”
One of the biggest barriers to widespread crypto adoption had been the inability of businesses to accept payments in cryptocurrency. That’s now been solved. And as the number of people who own crypto rises globally, so too does the demand to pay for goods and services with digital coins’.
ForumPay is in a strong position to exploit this. Plus according to Statista ‘Between Q3 of 2016 in Q1 of 2020, blockchain wallet adoption rose by 425%. Crypto paying consumers in the marketplace are spending in excess of €3.4 trillion annually’, more positive news for ForumPay.
So what are the next innovations that will take the digital currency to the next level?
Tate again; “Crypto has been around for more than 10 years now; Bitcoin is no longer an experiment. With a market capitalization of more than $200 billion, it would be considered a huge success, had it been a company. We know that the system works, and we believe the next step is enabling the option for users to spend their digital currencies with ease.“
The company is also looking at other specific factors, considered important to expansion. ForumPay is truly a “wallet agnostic solution” where users don’t need to install applications, or get dedicated wallets, to pay with the cryptocurrency of their choice. As Tate says,
“Physical stores and ecommerce platforms don’t ask their customers to have a dedicated wallet to shop with them. Being able to use the wallet of your choice is important. And of course, we believe that digital currency payments should be more efficient and cheaper than using the legacy payment system”.
There’s an old-fashioned joke circulating in the cryptocurrency world.
A daughter shows her banker father her latest work on Bitcoin’s lightning network, to speed up transactions. Her father asks her if she would like to hear his opinion on Bitcoin. She says yes.
“It’s worthless!” Says her father.
“I know”, she replies. “But let’s hear it anyway!”
ForumPay is well-positioned to surf on the crest of the Bitcoin wave. Watch this space.
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