Payments.

It always felt like a sleazy, unnecessary space desperate to validate and defend its purpose. The transfer of value was supposed to be free. The convenience of mobile credit — first in a credit card, now in our phones and tied to our identities in increasingly layered ways — was the primary justification for charging fees to transfer value.

Need money moved? Need a transaction settled by a 3rd party? It’s going to cost you.

Robbery and theft on the Silk Road was a real risk. Banks offered security, some of the time. The industry centralized and consolidated to establish a feeling of trust and security in fewer, bigger names. Their pristine lobbies became a mask for the over-leveraged insanity of creating riskier and riskier products — all dependent and further removed from the old measures of value we used to trust.

Payment in the future is no more risky than the past

Block chain has the potential to remove this middle layer, clarify the risk in legible contracts made smart by execution on the chain. Our verification, our wallets, live in places we used to assume the banks could only control.

The safety deposit box is online, encrypted and reliant on our memory and judgement for security. Communal trust and protection need not be at odds with payments and the record of exchange. This is less idealism and more reality as the major store-of-value currencies learn and expand to include more interfaces, protections, and users.

We worry about losing the ability to reverse a mistake, an unintentional payment of theft on ledger. Considering the as it really been any more risky to deal with centralized systems and the open road before them?