Old-fashioned meets modern when US Postal Service (USPS) announces its interest in provision of Bitcoin exchange services along with more traditional activities and well-known products. The revelation was sudden and very surprising to the most daring supporters of the virtual currency. The organization just seems to be a retrograde, but, as long as material aspects drive it to unconventional solutions to keep the desired level of interest from the society, it is ready to consider advanced technologies including Bitcoin.
Lately the Office of Inspector General has held an international online forum with the title “Virtual currencies: Exploring a Potential Role for Postal Operators”. Among the participants were many famous representatives of the industry, for example, the Universal Postal Union and World Bank. The main topic of the webinar was the potential of virtual currencies in the postal services branch and the adoption of the most used applications and features of virtual currencies at physical presences. Along the practical implementation contributors argued on the possibility to color coins.
One of the speakers, Christian Jaag, the managing partner at Swiss Economics, said following:
“There’s a great challenge to postal operators lately, postal volumes are decreasing, people do not go to post offices as often as they used to. However, postal operators have to maintain their networks, they have to look for new ways to fill their offices up and one potential contact point is the exchange of virtual currencies to other currencies.”
It is hard to discuss the statement as the current situation proves that the common postal services are obsolete. The maintenance of the USPS costs around 15.9 billion dollars per year, but the return is several times smaller. The tendency shows that the organization will produce less every year in comparison with the previous, if no new features or changes will be implemented. The launch of exchange services might bring the institution on a higher level and return the interest of the society. The 36000 branch offices might be the first venues to offer Bitcoin for fiat currencies offline. The already acquired money transmitter licenses can be easily adapted to Bitcoin and the USPS has the necessary funds to hold the required amount of deposits. This step might be a contribution for the cryptocurrency environment as well – the method of coin purchase will be faster, easier and safer. The collaboration with the oldest enterprise of the country will definitely make the image of the currency better.
The matter was the reason for many discussions on the web. A Reddit user, together with many others, sees particular advantages an individual might gain from this decision:
“I hope this is true, I’ve been wanting to buy Bitcoin for the longest time, but since I’m only 17 [years old] I can’t register with Coinbase and my parents don’t trust the idea of meeting a complete stranger with localbitcoins.com. I’m certain my parents would trust the postal service”.
The next several months will be required to prepare the plan of introduction of the Bitcoin exchange service in the existing structure of the USPS. Bloomberg reports that the organization was forced to consider additional financial opportunities of their customers and Bitcoin seems to be an interesting opportunity that might help out of the existing deadlock.