Cascadia Blockchain Group (CK.C) has recently established a plan to develop an application and payment solution to help support cryptocurrency to fiat money transactions.
This kind of announcement should draw some red flags as to whether or not this company actually knows what it’s promising.
A little technical explanation is required.
One of the biggest roadblocks to full adoption is the ability to trade in your BTC (or any other crypto) for fiat currency at any ATM. The reason for this is simple – the block needs to close (on average ten minutes) and then the BTC needs to shapeshift to fiat currency, which as a process can be variable in speed depending on what third party agency the company is going with. You can generally do this on most exchanges within a night. You make your request by 5 p.m. and by 5 a.m., it should land in your bank account depending on the exchange.
Cascadia’s application would allow customers to directly exchange crypto for fiat and transfer the fiat currencies to debit cards, which could then be used anywhere debit cards are accepted. Nowhere in the wording does it say what specific crypto, nor does it really offer any kind of explanation. The quickest and most capable of way of doing it would be to take a cryptocurrency (like BTC or LTC) and hold it in an escrow-like limbo while the block closes, while filling up the card with Tether (or USDT), which of course, carries with it a number of other different problems. Such as—what if the original BTC transaction doesn’t complete—then the company offering the service will be out some tether and be forced to cover.
Risky.
In this case, Cascadia’s proposed card would work similar to any other bank debit card, and allow instant withdrawal of cash from ATMs worldwide, and offer the ability to pay for goods and services at any point-of-sale device. Hence, leapfrogging over crypto’s scaling problem, and just offering a magic solution without even a recognition of any issues that may arise.
“It is important that we have a more diversified business model in addition to our cryptocurrency exchange, Eurasia Blockchain eXchange (EBX), which is currently under Astana Financial Services Authority’s fintech regulatory sandbox regime. This new mechanism will allow Cascadia to offer a low-cost method to convert cryptocurrencies to fiat money, and once completed, it provides immediate income and cash flow to the company through transaction fees. We look forward to updating shareholders on this development further in the near future,” said Di Deng, president and CEO of Cascadia.
Frankly, so are we. The probability isn’t good that this company is going to be able to resolve what Vitalik Buterin and the rest of his crew at ethereum, the folks at Blockchain Foundry (BCFN.C) and IOTA, and plenty of other services have been bashing away at for years.
In other news, Cascadia’s one of those lucky companies to be in a place where the majority of their workforce can work from home, so they haven’t been too adversely effected by the shutdown.
“Our team has been able to continue executing our business strategy during this unprecedented time. We do not anticipate any delays due to COVID-19 on development of our licenced cryptocurrency exchange, Eurasia Blockchain eXchange. Meanwhile, senior management of the head office has voluntarily suspended their salary payment during the pandemic to minimize cash outflow,” Deng said.
The lack of knowledge about the roadblocks they’re going to face when trying to get their crypto-to-fiat application off the ground produce a fair amount of incredulity, and curiosity, about how they’re going to operate their exchange.
We’ll find out in time.
—Joseph Morton