Future Bitcoin Flow

Predicting the future accurately is difficult to do but with working tools in your hands, it’s easy to come up with possible workflows and then extrapolate freely.

There are now several powerful, inexpensive and simple Bitcoin tools available that we can use to sketch out a speculative workflow for an ordinary Bitcoin user. This imaginary Bitcoin user gets paid in Bitcoin, and does not ever use a bank. These are some of the things she does as a part of her “Bitcoin Routine”.

Martha works at a Coffee roaster’s office in London. She uses only Bitcoin as a 1 for 1 replacement for all her money purposes. At the end of the week, Martha is paid by her boss, Amanda. She receives her weekly wages into her long term Bitcoin storage by flashing her Long term storage QR code to Amanda. This QR code is stored on her Sentinel “watch only” wallet. She can keep an eye on all the Bitcoin going into her addresses from this device, which if it is stolen, has no access to her motherlode of Bitcoin. Martha never goes into banks, has vanishingly small fees and is in total control of her money.

Amanda runs her large coffee importing, and roasting business that has international scope. Her company uses Bitcoin instead of money. All her Bitcoin is managed on a Ledger Nano-s and she doesn't use banks. Amanda pays all her staff, bills and expenses in Bitcoin, receives payment for her ground and roasted beans and pays her foreign suppliers in Bitcoin also. When she makes an order for a shipment of raw beans from new suppliers (for example in Kenya), she pays into a Multi Signature Escrow account service, and the Bitcoin is released to the Kenyan grower when the containers clear customs. Amanda’s accounting procedures are a breeze thanks to Thanks to Pierre Rochard’s work on standardized PostgreSQL tables for Bitcoin Businesses. Every week during payroll, Amanda asks her employees to flash a QR to her so she can pay them. The records keep themselves and everyone is paid instantly.

Enterprise Bitcoin

When Amanda’s buyers are out in the field, contracting for new supplies of raw coffee in remote areas of foreign countries, her buyers can pay growers on the spot. Once the deal and price has been fixed with a handshake, the growers are handed an OpenDime. Amanda receives a text from her buyer in the field saying, “Push £10,000 to QR 33 we did the deal!!”, she scans the address into her Ledger app, and seconds later, the OpenDime has £10,000 on it. The grower uses Samurai wallet to verify the Bitcoin is on the OpenDime. The grower uses OpenDime as a form of cash. He can take it to local business who will pay him local currency for it on the spot. OpenDimes are in wide circulation because they are infallible, indestructible and can carry from nothing to millions. They are accepted everywhere globally at face value.

Exquisite OpenDime

Finally, Biodun is a student in Hamburg. He does part time work in a beer guarden while he studies for his management degree. The beer garden doesn’t pay him Bitcoin; they pay him in cash. Biodun sends his sister Bola money in Accra every week. He can only send a little bit, but her other brothers also send her Bitcoin, and this keeps her going nicely. Biodun goes to his local supermarket and buys an Azteco Voucher with Euros on his way home. He redeems his voucher direct to his sister’s address from his phone every Friday like clockwork. The fees to send this money are very small, and Bola gets the ability to buy anything from anywhere on earth through services like Purse, who never reject her orders because she is from Ghana. She uses Samurai Wallet to store, manage and spend her Bitcoin.

Purse

With these scenarios as a starting point, you can imagine an infinite number of variations where the tools above fit in perfectly. Everyone saves time, money and hassle. Everyone is in total control of their own money, and they can do it from wherever they are, at any time. All payments are guaranteed, and never go wrong. Everyone can prove they paid, prove they were paid, and do many complex functions where trust needs to be secured, as in the case of international shipping of goods secured by Multi Sig.

Bitcoin is used for small amounts between families, and large amounts between companies. It is everywhere, all the time, and there only needs to be Bitcoin; all alt-coins (what some people call “cryptos”) are redundant. Since everyone is on Bitcoin, you always know you will be able to spend it and work with it with other people.

These four tools are just the beginning, but with them, many billions of fiat compressed into Bitcoin will be managed, moved and accounted for, changing the way business is done for millions of people. As more of these tools and the processes they make possible become normal, we will begin to see a large and very robust Bitcoin ecosystem emerge. Everyone will ask themselvs…

How did we live without Bitcoin?

Biodun sometimes tips Beautyon. He made it easy for him to use Bitcoin!

Future Bitcoin Flow was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.