I recently sent a wire transfer. The money was destined for a promising tech startup. I was so excited!
Then I logged into my account a few days later and noticed a mysterious $20 charge. Next to it, the dreaded words “Wire Transfer Fee.”
Eww. Why should sending what amounts to a text message cost $20? Because they can, that’s why.
I found another bank that offers free wire transfers, which is very rare. But this experience got me thinking: what if we blew up this system?
That’s where a new cryptocurrency called Elrond comes in. Since its launch last year, this innovative coin’s price has gone vertical:
But what’s even more impressive than that is its capabilities. The Elrond Network can process up to 263,000 transactions per second.
That’s more than ten times Visa’s capacity and over 25 times Ethereum 2.0’s.
It also uses a new technique called adaptive state sharding. This means that the network can create more nodes, which process transactions, as the network grows. It can also merge them if participants leave.
This means a network that scales up and down easily. No other cryptocurrency that I know of has this feature.
So what does it cost to process payments on Elrond?
Practically nothing. In fact, someone recently transferred $17 million for less than a penny on the Elrond Network.
Take that, banksters!
One fly in the crypto ointment could be Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations. These require identity verification for all accounts and payments and are designed to avoid money laundering.
But the entire banking industry handles KYC for just $500 million a year. The blockchain could actually make it easier and cheaper by letting banks share that info. That way, each bank doesn’t have to go through the process again with the same person.
So, does Elrond work as an investment? I’m not sure, and I’m eager to hear your thoughts on that. Leave a comment at the very bottom. (I don’t own Elrond currently.)
For anything this high risk, I’d like to see the possibility of a 100x or greater return, just like with early-stage startups.
The fully diluted market cap currently sits at $8 billion. Can it get to $800 billion?
That will depend on how much of the existing financial structure it replaces.
More on tech:
How Solana Could Wipe Out Visa and MasterCard
Why I Just Invested in Kippo, Where Gamers Find Love
The Hamster Crypto Trader That’s Outperforming Me
Photo: “Hobbit House from Lord of the Rings by Michael Matti” by Michael Matti is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0
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