It has been nearly 15 years since the Bitcoin white paper came out, and if you are like me, you feel goosebumps when you read the title “A peer-to-peer Electronic Cash System”. Not just by the elegance of the technology, but also by the implication of what it can unleash. In this time we’ve seen internecine battles about block sizes, scaling philosophy, decentralization theatre, and other esoteric discussions about blockchain architecture. But all of it is for naught if it isn’t useful for people. If it doesn’t make my life better it hardly matters to me if blocks produce in 400ms or if I can run a validator on a Raspberry Pi. The promise of crypto has always been several steps ahead of its reality, and it excels at spinning up many big-brain ideas without delivering on more basic use cases. We need to eat our meat before we can have any pudding.

It has been nearly 15 years since the Bitcoin white paper came out, and if you are like me, you’re wondering why I still cannot buy coffee with crypto without the payment going through at least 5 different rent-seeking intermediaries before reaching the merchant.

That is why I’m starting Passport. An open standard for payments for merchants everywhere.

Learn more at https://passport-labs.xyz