Shift Mental Models to Understand Bitcoin – Bitcoin Magazine
This is a transcribed excerpt of the “Bitcoin Magazine Podcast”, hosted by P and Q. In this episode, they are joined by Rafa Cordon to talk about Ibex building Lightning Network payment infrastructure and what he thinks the future holds for bitcoin.
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Q: It’s always interesting to see and have these conversations around today’s use cases for bitcoin because there’s a level of privilege Americans, especially, get with money. Then you turn around and leave America and you start to really see how and why they need money in real time.
In these interactions or in your own personal experience, are there things you would like to see further developed or offered for people to use their bitcoin?
Rafa Cordon: I think financial institutions are getting on board bitcoin. That’s a big part of our similar sales or commercial efforts is not to onboard individuals or small merchants, but to onboard these large companies that have millions of users on their app and just add bitcoin into an app like this.
There’s this trend right now of this thing called super apps. A super app is an app that does everything, like WeChat in China, KakaoTalk in Korea. There are several super apps coming up in different countries. Our focus is to help these super app companies integrate bitcoin into their apps, and that’s one single effort you have to make to give exposure to bitcoin to about five million, 10 million people in one store.
That’s what we’re focusing on and I think more financial institutions are getting more comfortable with bitcoin every day, especially here in Guatemala, we’re next to El Salvador. Many institutions ask about it.
That is what needs to happen from a regulatory standpoint. There is no legal definition for bitcoin in many countries. I think only El Salvador is the country that has a law that says what bitcoin is in a certain way. It needs more details, but it is like a legal definition of what bitcoin is. I think we need to define what bitcoin is from a legal standpoint, not necessarily as laws passed by Congress, but things like jurisprudence, like having history of interpretations of what bitcoin is. So that’s like a general idea from a legal point of view of what bitcoin is. I think it needs to happen in these countries for more financial institutions to become comfortable with it. But ultimately it’s about the people, like how people are going to see bitcoin, how they’re going to use it.
We’re doing some user research with people who pay out money transfers, and it’s been interesting about how you have to change a mindset. I think all of us Bitcoiners, we changed that mindset. It took us a long time, but we changed that mindset. So how can we change the mindset of millions of people in one shot?
For example, we created a fake bitcoin wallet and we showed it to people who heard the payouts. They were receiving remittances and converting it to cash, and one of the first things that came up is that the first feedback was like, “Hey, I don’t have to create an account here? Like I don’t have to enter my email and password?”
It was surprising. They said, “Oh, I’m not sure I want to use it because I don’t trust it.” Because they are used to creating an account just like a bank account, like a Facebook.
P: Oh, wow. It is so interesting. Wait, then just repeat it.
Cordon: It was surprising.
P: I want to make sure I understand what you are saying. You say that because people are so used to being KYCed (following know-your-customer regulations to provide personal information), which I see as a crime, the fact that when someone wants to engage with financial services , must completely dox themselves to the services they use. You’re saying that because your users didn’t have to do that, they said, “I don’t know if I can trust this financial action.
Cordon: Exactly. Exact.
P: Wow! Man, that sucks.
Cordon: It is. That’s what I’m talking about, like changing a mental model. Because a lot of people who receive remittances probably didn’t get a high school education or college or anything.
They are used to creating an account. Most of them have a Facebook account or a Twitter account. “Every new service I’m going to use, I have to create an account for.” It’s the logical kind of reasoning, and when you say, “Hey, you can just use it, receive bitcoin, you don’t need to create an account,” they say, “Um, wait a minute, what is this?”
It was an interesting thing, so we are thinking about how we can educate the user to break the paradigms that bitcoin enables. Those are the things. There are more things that need to change in a way in people’s psyche or mentality or the way they have been used to consume internet based services to how Bitcoin works.
