Imagine a scenario in which you want to repay a friend who bought you lunch, by sending money online to his or her account. There are several ways in which this could go wrong, including:

The financial institution could have a technical issue, such as its systems are down or the machines aren’t working properly.
Your or your friend’s account could have been hacked—for example, there could be a denial-of-service attack or identity theft.
The transfer limits for your or your friend’s account could have been exceeded.
There is a central point of failure: the bank.

This is why the future of currency lies with cryptocurrency. Now imagine a similar transaction between two people using the bitcoin app. A notification appears asking whether the person is sure he or she is ready to transfer bitcoins. If yes, processing takes place: The system authenticates the user’s identity, checks whether the user has the required balance to make that transaction, and so on. After that’s done, the payment is transferred and the money lands in the receiver’s account. All of this happens in a matter of minutes.