Onchain Value Movement: A Manifesto

The evolution of financial services in the 30 years since Bill Gates made his famous pronouncement has proven the Microsoft visionary right. We no longer need banks – at least, not as we knew them at the end of the 20th century. Yet the services banks were built to provide remain essential to life in our times: we simply cannot participate in society without them. Thanks to innovations in financial technology, we have banking apps and online transfer services for that now. 

Thanks to innovations in web3, we can go beyond banking, and start empowering onchain value movement: the instant, ultra-secure circulation of not only currency but of any and all forms of assets using blockchain technology.

0. Introduction

Fintech gave us open banking. With that came the power for businesses and consumers to bank on our own terms, all while remaining compliant. 

Self-custodial wallets have helped facilitate that movement and liberate the exchange and storage of assets by putting them directly in the hand of the consumer. But they're not "banks" as we have come to know them. Nor should they be. What we need now is a system in which account holders enjoy the accessibility, convenience, and feeling of autonomy brought to users by open banking – decoupled from banks, but nonetheless inspired by and complimenting what they offer. 

Looking back at how financial institutions and services opened the doors in the 21st century so far highlights a clear path toward the future of financial products. We know what we must build: a support system for onchain value movement. We are going to build it with you. 

But first, a little history.

1. Money Moves into the Palms of our Hands

We owe the digital banking revolution of the 2000s not to heritage banks, but to fintechs. 

The neobanks that emerged in the first decades of the 21st century completely transformed what we expect from financial service providers – without getting rid of anything the old institutions used to provide. The accessibility, the speed and ease of movement, the generous management and planning tools, and the enticing rewards schemes digital native service introduced raised the bar so high that the financial establishment had to evolve or perish. Fintech paved the way to an entirely new user experience, reshaping how businesses and private individuals interact with financial products, and streamlining the infrastructure that powers them. 

These innovators also worked hard to maintain compliance, influencing new, evolved policies that opened the entire market up. Suddenly, you didn’t need to have been around in the 1800s to launch a new financial product. With the right tech – and the right understanding of what businesses and individuals truly need – anyone could innovate. Still, nothing was thrown out with the bathwater: neobanks not only kept but upleveled everything their forebears provided, from compliance to fraud prevention, ATM networks to loyalty points, FDIC protection to customer service. 

Remarkably, these emerging providers also cultivated trust at historic speeds. Fintech introduced new ways to keep individuals and organizations safe, paving the way in mobile and digital banking security with advanced encryption, authentication, and analytics that have permanently changed how we feel and do business online. 

These new financial solutions sought to respond to what 21st century consumers truly wanted – and the fintechs behind them delivered. They pried an entire industry open and used that expanse to create the best products we’d ever seen. For the individuals and businesses using them, it’s hard to imagine what life was like before. 

2. Bells and Whistles: Luxury as the New Standard

Thanks to these innovations, today, the bare minimum we require from financial service providers has scaled up. Our fundamental needs include real-time updates, biometric authentication and encryption, personalized insights and budgeting tools, seamless digital onboarding and integration with other financial services, instant money transfers, low or no fees, and excellent customer support.

Increasingly, the latest banking experience also seems to require a heavy, stylish metal card – possibly worthy of an “unboxing” video.  

Thanks to the healthy marketplace cultivated by open banking, rewards and incentives programs are becoming more attractive by the day. Cashback offers are bigger, apply to more purchases, and are tailored to one’s personal habits. Loyalty programs are tiered; financial planning is gamified, with better and better prizes awarded for milestones. Transfers are socialized, transactions sharable as memories with friends. Travel, lifestyle, and wellness perks abound. 

But beyond providing accounts and the ability to move money with seamlessly usable, mobile-friendly interfaces, there is a beautiful tech stack that exists under the hood of banking. Because as fintech boomed, the architecture of the bank stack changed, too.

3. We’re Not in the 2010s Anymore

When open banking (literally) mobilized the system, the monolithic structure of the 20th century cracked open, giving way to an interconnected web of financial products. Consumers and businesses were able to move money with unprecedented ease and speed. Innovation and competition boomed. The market has enjoyed a diversity of offerings, catering to a range of needs, ever since. Whether you want to split dinner with friends or do bookkeeping for your start-up, a product has emerged to make that easier. 

Open banking has yet to reach its full potential. As connective as this phrase is, it leaves out an entire technological infrastructure that would take it to a new level of openness: blockchain.  

As the 2010s showered us with new-and-improved financial products, the promise of an open, transparent, secure, decentralized network meanwhile inspired the emergence of a fully onchain economy. But as a relative newcomer, that ecosystem has more or less operated in isolation, disconnected from other digital and financial infrastructure. So, as fintech products became sleeker, interacting with the onchain economy remained as crude as writing a check. 

Never forget: the first bitcoin wallet required the user to run a full node – which would be quite the feat today, considering the breadth of the network. People were printing out their public and private keys on pieces of paper. The experience was unrefined, and the system unscalable.

As more blockchains were created and more users onboarded, wallet infrastructure began to take shape. Founded in 2014, the renowned hardware wallet provider Ledger provides an extremely secure, cold storage solution for onchain value. Software wallets with browser extensions gave users extremely quick access to myriad assets. Now, centralized exchanges offer fully custodial solutions that allow less crypto literate users to buy, sell, and trade tokens. “Smart wallets” have made onboarding fast and logins seamless. Account abstraction has come a long way.

Still, despite holding vast amounts of value, wallet infrastructure doesn’t come close to the standards set by neobanks. In order for both systems to evolve, they have to do so together.

4. Enter Our Post-Wallet Era

Those seeking to expand the onchain economy and encourage adoption have, logically, called for better UX. Wallets have responded with increasingly user-friendly products. Some even offer credit and rewards now. And those stylish debit cards we mentioned? Wallets offer those, too. 

Wallets are vulnerable to security breaches and social engineering. So are banks, of course, whether they’re brick and mortar or in the cloud. But the difference is that if something goes wrong, your wallet won’t protect you. 

Coinshift onchain accounts will. 

More than a wallet, this logical and urgent next step in onchain value movement merges the innovative features of web3 with the user-friendly experience of neobanking, and the compliance, tools, services, and safety provisions we’ve come to expect from financial institutions. 

Onchain value movement is defined by four pillars: it is self-custodial, open source, secure, and hyperconnected. 

In other words. onchain value movement is greater than the sum of its parts. 

Account card use and onchain value movement activity are met competitive rewards both onchain and off. Loan programs, financial planning and asset management tools, and compliance measures are built-in, easy-to-use, and personalizable. Relationship managers and customer support provide human assistance on blockchain time: 24/7, across the globe. 

As trust in the ecosystem grows, onchain value movement for and by individuals and businesses will become the cornerstone of an inclusive, efficient, and compliant financial future. Accounts for onchain value movement will foster unhindered innovation at unprecedented speeds – and makes consumers feel safe, seen, and mutually empowered. 

Because self-custody shouldn’t mean going it alone.

5. Coinshift: The Standard for Onchain Value Movement

Coinshift was founded with a vision to make financial and treasury management for onchain organizations as secure, accurate, compliant, accessible, and enjoyable – really! – as possible. 

In our mission to bridge the gap between neobank-like usability and blockchain technology for business operations – via streamlined accounting, bookkeeping, reporting, invoicing, and payouts – we became passionate about the experience layer of the internet. We have always believed that greater usability creates space for creativity, and allows companies, founders, and teams to grow. Working with our users to refine and perfect our product, this has proven to be true: organizations feel empowered by Coinshift. 

That’s partly because they’ve helped us build it. Without their expert feedback, we wouldn’t have a product that responds to their needs. As we expand to offer consumer accounts, we will create alongside our individual users as well. Because Coinshift sees everyone as an entrepreneur, a financial architect seeking tools for freedom and expansion – without sacrificing compliance safety. 

The tech stack behind onchain value movement must be built in public. We’re going to build it with you.