On August 3rd two articles were released online; one from Businesswire.com, and the other from thenextweb.com. They both had similar stories, but about very different companies. Bakkt and Coinbase are both trying to bring cryptocurrency more into the mainstream consumer world, by allowing you to purchase goods with cryptocurrency. However, I wonder if this is similar to the race of credit cards. When credit cards were new, each company tried to snatch up retailers before the other could in a race to be the most popular. In Canada, Visa and Mastercard are widely accepted now but American express fell to the wayside with a lot of retailers. If this race between Bakkt and Coinbase mirrors that of credit cards will they be the next Visa and Mastercard? Let’s analyze what they’re initially bringing to the table.   

Coinbase

  Coinbase has been popping up in the news a lot lately, as they always seem to be expanding their business in different ways. What they’re doing this week that caught my eye though, was their announcement of their “Open Financial System.” This system is a peer to peer payment system for cryptocurrencies (Though for now just Bitcoin and Litecoin, with Ethereum and Bitcoin cash coming soon.) The system was designed so that WooCommerce webstores can accept cryptocurrency from Coinbase. “When customers send money from their cryptocurrency wallet it’s sent directly to a merchant-controlled cryptocurrency address and processed on-chain by the respective blockchain,” said the Coinbase release. This benefits the merchant by not having to pay any transaction fees and gives cryptocurrency another practical application. Coinbase has also teamed up with Wegift, which allows you to buy e-giftcards with cryptocurrency (the release however did not state which cryptocurrencies beyond Bitcoin or Ether). The release went on to say that some of the retailers accepting the gift cards are “Nike, Tesco, Uber, Google Play, Ticketmaster, Zalando, and many more.” Sadly the system is only available so far in UK, France, Italy, Spain, Netherlands and Australia; but more countries are said to be coming.   

Bakkt

  Bakkt is a new company in development by Intercontinental Exchange. The goal of Bakkt is to create a platform that consumers and merchants can buy, sell or store cryptocurrencies on a global network. Bakkt will be working with BCG, Microsoft and  
 Starbucks to make this dream happen. Mara Smith, President of Starbucks said “As the flagship retailer, Starbucks will play a pivotal role in developing practical, trusted and regulated applications for consumers to convert their digital assets into US dollars for use at Starbucks,” But Bakkt plans to do more than just be a way to purchase Starbucks coffee with cryptocurrency. Bakkt plans to implement federally regulated markets as well as warehousing, which is bit controversial in the cryptocurrency world, and it will take time to know if this is a good thing or not.     In conclusion, any company trying to bring cryptocurrency into a more mainstream practical setting I applaud. Whether one will triumph over the other, its too soon to tell. In the long term, we can all hope this trend reaches all retailers. In the short term though, it’s definitely something to keep your eye on if you want to stock up on e-gift cards, or soon want to buy starbucks with Cryptocurrency.