Money Across Borders: How Cryptocurrency Has Opened Global Exchange
At its core, cryptocurrencies have offered a way to digitally store and transfer value in a manner secured by cryptography rather than governments and other third parties.
Across the world, money has been locked away—restricted from being used to its full potential. Yet, these restrictions are not due to money being sealed within vaults or behind armed guards. Rather, the laws governing national borders have restricted money from achieving its full potential in global commerce. Around the world, people sending money abroad pay a myriad of processing fees only to be stuck waiting days for transactions to clear. Others have become trapped and cut off from society as authoritarian governments freeze their finances in a bid to stomp out opposition. And still more have been forced to watch as their wealth decays under mismanaged currencies with no other alternative available. Although it may be easy to take a smooth payments system for granted, the existing system has all too often isolated people from the rest of the world.
A new challenger has emerged in recent years that may put an end to these struggles: cryptocurrency. What began in 2008 with the introduction of a single white paper about a peer‐to‐peer electronic cash system has since become a global phenomenon. And since its introduction, Bitcoin has inspired people around the world to innovate and create what is now popularly known as “cryptocurrency.”
At its core, cryptocurrencies have offered a way to digitally store and transfer value in a manner secured by cryptography rather than governments and other third parties. In doing so, Bitcoin, and the cryptocurrencies that followed, opened new opportunities for people across the world. Part of those opportunities have been cryptocurrency’s ability to move money across borders in an increasingly global economy.