Innovations We’re Thankful For: Bitcoin

As we gear up for PYMNTS.com’s Innovation Project 2014 our annual showcase of the best new ideas and brightest minds in the payments space, we’re launching a special Innovations We’re Thankful For Series, a three-part special that aims to highlight the disruptive forces our experts believe are shaping the industry for the better heading into 2014.

In each installment, we’ll focus on a new technology, its use cases and the reasons why we believe it’s something we should be celebrating. Happy holidays!

By Matt Witheiler, Principal, Flybridge Capital Partners (@witheiler)

The payments innovation I’m most thankful for is bitcoin, but probably not for the reason that you think.

See, it would be easy to be thankful for bitcoin if I had loaded up on the currency when I bought my first bitcoin in March at about $60. But, unfortunately for me, I only bought enough to make my bitcoin fortune worth $281 as of today – a nice return, but not quite retirement money. It also would be easy to be thankful for the currency if I was the anonymous individual who transferred $150 million USD worth of bitcoin on Thursday, but the truth is that in the months since my first bitcoin purchase I have yet to buy more.

So, to say I’m thankful for bitcoin because of the financial gain I’ve enjoyed from the currency would be a lie – if anything, the appreciation of bitcoin has only frustrated me thanks to the money that could have been. No, instead this season I’m thankful for bitcoin for two non-financial reasons.

The first reason I’m thankful for is that bitcoin is that it’s driving entrepreneurial energy into the payments world for the first time in a long time. For years and years, payments and the broader fintech world was a second-class citizen in the venture investing world. Because investment dollars were hard to come by, exit opportunities few and far between, and perceived barriers to entry were high, there was little startup activity in the fintech space. Bitcoin has changed all that.

Driven by bitcoin attention, leading investors everywhere are suddenly interested in the category. Bitcoin attention has a halo effect in the broader fintech world since the technology is encouraging all sorts of players to rethink the status quo. This is manifesting itself with a record number of dollars going into the category: data from CB Insights suggests that since bitcoin began to take hold in 2011, investment in fintech companies increased 20 percent in 2012 and it is projected to increase a similar amount in 2013. As more capital enters the fintech startup market, more entrepreneurs will be attracted to the space and (with lots of luck) great companies will emerge. I’m very thankful for that.

The second aspect of bitcoin that I’m thankful for is how the technology is forcing regulators to have a dialogue around currencies and payments. For too long now, the startup world has been shut out of the regulatory process when it comes to payments. The latest example comes from last week’s pair of Senate committee hearings on bitcoin but in the months leading up to this there has been clear signaling out of regulators from the CFTC to the SEC of what will, and as importantly will not, be kosher when it comes to this new world of payments. With rules of engagement being outlined and startups actively included in the dialogue, I’m thankful that bitcoin is forcing regulators to think progressively.

Probably like many of you, I wish I was writing this as a “bitcoin millionaire” – it would be easy to be thankful for that. But, in some ways, the increased startup attention and regulatory discussion bitcoin has spawned is even more reason to be thankful. No matter what happens to the price of bitcoin in the coming months and years, the wave of change it has started is undoubtedly here to last and I’m thankful for that, even if it doesn’t mean I can retire tomorrow.

For more of Witheiler’s insights into the bitcoin market, read “Bitcoin and Blood Pressure” here.