[p2p-research] Michel; A question

[Michel Bauwens]

Very illuminating, thanks Simon,

Michel

On Sat, Sep 5, 2009 at 7:34 AM, Simon Edhouse <simon at virtusoft.net> wrote:

> Michel,
> the simple answer to that question, that although there are projects like
> Cyclos which as stated on their website: "..is open source online banking
> software for complementary currency systems like LETS, Barter networks, Time
> banks and exchange systems that are introduced in order to stimulate the
> circulation and the availability of credit in regions or countries with
> under-use of capacities."
>
> This is *not* where the strong adoption is taking place in relation to the
> specific question you asked: i.e.  *"have their been any developments
> regarding card-based currencies, especially as related to 'open money'?"*
>
> The real adoption is taking place in China driven mainly in the gaming and
> market, and its not the banks or the credit-card companies, mass-growth and
> adoption is with the *"third-party payment providers in China"*   The
> market leader is AliPay, then followed by 99Bill, PayEase, Tenpay, Yeepay,
> etc  ( see http://bit.ly/eITK5 )
>
> This slideshare presentation<http://www.slideshare.net/web2asia/successful-ecommerce-in-china> on
> "E-Commerce in China" is worth a look, but its conclusions as to why eBay's
> China strategy has failed to compete effectively with local players Alibaba
> and Taobao in the C2C market, are not quite correct in my view. - What I
> have determined is that various forces within the highest levels of the
> Chinese political-economy will implicitly support mainland Chinese
> Corporates over Foreign Corporates. As an example... Note the rise of
> Chinese mega Company 'TenCent'... ("*Tencent Holdings Limited<http://www.tencent.com/en-us/index.shtml> (“Tencent”
> or the “Company”, SEHK 00700), a leading provider of Internet and mobile &
> telecommunications value-added services in China"*)
>
> TenCent, incorporated on the HK stock exchange and implicitly sanctioned by
> Beijing, owns QQ, the dominant instant messaging platform in China and also
> is the largest SMS provider, knocked out other potential competitors like
> Linktone <http://www.secinfo.com/d12Um2.18z.htm>, (one of our previous
> clients at Ogilvy in Shanghai) Linktone had a joint-billing agreement with
> China Mobile in 2001, and was in a prime position to dominate SMS industry,
> but once it had defined the market and demonstrated how to make a profit in
> their sector, they were effectively usurped and neutered by the political
> elite.
>
> TenCent now has 891.9 million IM accounts in China, (an average of 3
> accounts per each internet user in China! Now there's a strange
> statistic...) and almost total control of the SMS market. See this
> illuminating Slideshare presentation called 'Inside Tencent Presentation<http://www.slideshare.net/plus8star/inside-tencent-presentation>
> '...
>
> Michel... In summary, I would say that it's China that will definine the
> future of card-based currencies and 'open-money'... and I would expect
> TenCent and AliPay to dominate this realm for the next few years... Then, my
> prediction is that the Chinese Government itself will convert its own
> transport-card system, which is directly based on HK's Octopus card, (which
> is a stored value cash-card, widely used beyond its transport card origins)
> and which has been rolled out as a pure transport card in every major city
> on the Chinese mainland. They will convert this transport card to a full
> cash-card at some point, and thereby control a China-only e-commerce
> currency and then be able to (potentially) skim a VAT.. something that they
> cannot do at the moment, and will need to start to think about to build a
> tax-revenue base to continue to modernize China's economy.
>
> The West will look on and learn.
>
> Simon Edhouse
>
>
>   On 05/09/2009, at 12:33 AM, Michel Bauwens wrote:
>
>
>  Hi Simon,
>
> have their been any developments regarding card-based currencies,
> especially as related to 'open money'?
>
> Michel
>
>
>       ___________________
>
>  Virtusoft Pty. Ltd.
> Box 37, Kent Town B.C.
> South Australia
> Australia, 5071
> T: +61 8 8232 8560
> Mobile: 0403 236 882
> www.virtusoft.net
>
> The information in this e-mail may be confidential and/or legally
> privileged.  Use or disclosure of the information by anyone other than the
> intended recipient is prohibited and may be unlawful.  If you have
> received this e-mail in error, please advise by return e-mail or by
> telephoning +61 8 8232 8560.
>
>


-- 
Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Research:
http://www.dpu.ac.th/dpuic/info/Research.html - Think thank:
http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI

P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net

Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org

Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/attachments/20090905/d308cb8c/attachment-0001.html>