Did you know that in the early days of tennis, rackets didn't even have grips?
In the 15th century, rackets were first introduced to a sport that consisted of hitting a ball with the hand, giving way to tennis as we know it today.
Rackets back then were far from what they are today. They were mainly made out of wood, and it was impossible to distinguish the handle from the frame. This was true until the 19th century, when for the first time a handle was added to the instrument, however, the purpose of the sport was similar to what it is today.
Time went by and improvements to rackets continued. New patterns were added to the strings, nails appeared, different types of wood were used. In other words, advances that allowed players to have better tools to fulfill their objective were made, recognizing that the previous ones, even though worked okay, could be improved.
Was there resistance? Probably yes, but in the end, progress won.
Wood reigned until the 1980s, when rackets began to be constructed out of graphite, carbon fiber, fiberglass, and other lightweight materials, the focus again being to enhance the features of the traditional instrument.
Former American player, John McEnroe, told the newspaper “El Espectador”:
“We used to use different implements, such as wooden supports on the strings, so the game was slower and more strategic-focussed. Now it's a faster game, because there is much more power in the rackets and in the technology to make things happen just like that: faster.”
And so it is with money: just like rackets, its forms are not static. First barter was used, then stones, gold, paper (banknotes), until we reached the point of what we see today.
The history of money and its various advances respond to a need of improving what we already have.
At the time, gold, which was used worldwide as a method of payment, became unviable, because humans began to travel further and faster. We needed a way to move that value, and thus coins and banknotes were born, which we still use today, but in an increasingly less manner.
Today, humanity requires a form of money that responds to the hyper-connectivity in which we are inserted, thanks to the internet. That is how fully digital alternatives are born.
USDC is one of them, and just as it happened with tennis rackets, it comes to propose multiple improvements to what we already know, responding to the new way we have to interact.
Are there detractors? Yes, but as with tennis rackets, this new form of money is a way us humans have to adapt to new standards of life.
With USDC, a stable cryptocurrency linked to the dollar, we can send and receive money to and from anywhere in the world in a matter of minutes, almost completely ignoring geographical borders.
Being fully digital, the costs of transporting it are rendered irrelevant, adding to this a level of transparency and traceability that is very difficult to find in older forms of money.