nickymohawk Thanks for putting these thoughts out there, I completely agree with you.
Going back in time, so much of the early talk about crypto/Bitcoin was mired in discussions about the "totally anonymous" transactions of illicit goods on places like Silk Road. But here's the thing, people's identities may have been obscured -- but they were far from anonymous entities. Trust, customer service, and feedback/reviews were just as important as they were in any other marketplace.
In the world of open source banking, there will be use cases for things like zcash where people don't want transactions tied back to them personally. That's totally cool, no problem at all. But to circle back around to your point, in a world where we remove the financial intermediaries we also remove some of the protections they provide. For this to work, the concept of trust and identity becomes even more important. I'm not sending Lumens to someone I'm not comfortable doing business with.
This is where I think we have another huge opportunity using the blockchain. 2 key attributes of the blockchain that make it valuable are 1) transactions are visible and 2) they can't be altered. It's those 2 things which make a pretty strong case for it being used as the system of record for trust and identity for marketplaces.
There are so many exciting things here to explore and build. Right now I'm trying to stay focused on the the things we can pull off today - ie I'm just some guy selling stickers for Lumens to other early adopters on the internet. ?
Thank you for providing some background and real-world stories about ITEX. I wasn't familiar with it before, but this is the perfect example of looking at a system or network that exists today and figuring out to improve upon it. We're not trying to overthrow central banks here, we're just trying to use technology to help people solve everyday problems.
