(Newswire.net — April 26, 2022) — With the success of major cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, as well as the rising popularity of NFTs, blockchain has been increasingly more accepted not only as an investment asset but also as a payment method. Recently, the American companies Paypal and Venmo have introduced a flat-free structure for cryptocurrency trades of up to $200 on their platforms.
In fact, it is worth mentioning that not only private enterprises are entering the blockchain game. Several countries have been implementing cryptocurrency as a payment method not only in e-commerce but also in physical stores. According to Professor Nicola Fausto Spoto, an expert in smart contracts in blockchain and spokesperson of AiliA, this has been widely observed in Latin American countries, such as El Salvador.
El Salvador has completely dollarized its economy, an achievement that is now not exactly positive for the country as the dollar suffers from an inflation problem that partially erodes wealth. “Moreover, it is a country of migrants who send money home, often paying very high fees to transmission gateways and banks,” adds Professor Spoto.
In face of these challenges, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have been showing the undisputed advantage of being used in a peer-to-peer way, therefore allowing exchanges to be performed at low fees and without intermediaries. “El Salvador is a very important ‘test’ for Bitcoin and not just for Salvadorans, because it is monitored by both cryptocurrency supporters, financial institutions, and governments around the world”, explains Professor Spoto.
In 2018, AiliA also created its own blockchain platform, Takamaka, which is a protocol similar to Ethereum, but faster and more secure. Designed to be used in Java language, which is a highly popular language used by programmers and developers, Takamaka is a very friendly platform for those who want to start ideas and projects in the blockchain. Its native consensus protocol, Takamaka Proof of Stake or TPoS, is an algorithm that allows a fast and secure network that transacts stably up to 1,200,000 Tx/h, but which can further scale.
Initiatives such as Takamaka have been proving that in spite of the pessimism of the so-called “crypto winter”, blockchain is still a promising and heated market with young companies and start-ups still raising huge amounts of money, both from venture capital and fundraisers originating from crypto crowdfunding. Professor Spoto mentions protocols such as DeFi, NFT, and WEB3 as examples of the present success of blockchain.
With cases such as El Salvador’s, Professor Spoto believes that other countries could follow the same path by increasing the net of settling legal and anti-money laundering compliance issues through the use of blockchain and cryptocurrencies. However, this kind of implementation has some important bottlenecks. Spoto says that the implementation of cryptocurrencies as an official payment method is something that could only work in countries with a relatively small economy, preferable fully functioning communications infrastructure, a large population of people who are able to “accept” cryptocurrencies, and average computer literacy.
Besides its benefits in reducing fees and bureaucracy, cryptocurrencies also work in a technology that is considered one of the safest currently available. Even when it comes to speculation about the threats of quantum hacking in the future, there are cases such as the Takamaka blockchain in which the protocol is already resistant to this kind of issue. This is because Takamaka is already working with qTesla, an algorithm that provides a totally different approach to protect its platform from quantum attacks.
Since its creation in 2018, the number of registered users on the Takamaka blockchain has only increased – to date, there are almost 20,000 registered and authorized users. In 2021, the platform has also received VQF authorization, which ensures that the Takamaka blockchain is fully compliant with Swiss anti-money laundering regulations and is considered digital money for all purposes.