07 Nov Adam Back and David Chaum on the Future of Online Payments and Africa
We are back from a week in Athens of blockchain, digital currencies, smart contracts and online payments at the Decentralized Conference. The world of online payments is evolving at a rapid pace. We were very honoured and privileged and grateful to have had conversations with crypto and digital payment legends David Chaum and Adam Back. David Chaum is a renowned cryptographer and the developer of the world’s first digital payment system “eCash” which interestingly enough could be used anonymously, and the now inventor of a cryptocurrency called Praxxis which is intended to be used for digital payment into the future. Adam Back is a softspoken, kind and gentle soul, cryptographer, inventor of Hashcash (a proof of work antispam system), and co-Founder and CEO of Blockstream who are developing and evolving the payment systems Liquid and Lightning that we will most likely be transacting with on bitcoin into the future. Our question to the two of them was where we are going with online payments in Africa, how will it impact on our lives, how it is going to be adopted, from a consumer perspective, is it going to make a difference, and how long will it take?