Year report. How Will We Remember 2008?

Unfortunately, or fortunately, but it is time to press the Shift and holding this broad-key press the “dash” button, close to Backspace. What are we doing? Drawing a line, saying good bye to 2008, it is time to consider its outcomes.

Watching the news, information ribbons and the doomsday set by the blue screen, any reader of TJ, is likely to be expecting a very negative emotional overtones of this article. We would, of course, facetiously say that you are wrong, but all components of the world economy today say that there is a crisis is going on in the world in which there is a very little positive. Except the optimistic belief that after the crisis there is always a rise, the rest of the year 2008 brought us so much headache that even the good results of growth of electronic finance industry is not capable of covering.

All began with the collapse on the world stock markets in January 2008 that confirmed the validity of Russian saying “the year is spent the way it is celebrated”. Indeed, the stock indices of all sites in the world have distinguished themselves throughout the year being volatile that gradually accumulated to hit the world economy as a crisis in fall. But before everything had collapsed, before reports became full of the word “crisis”, we all witnessed how the U.S. mortgage credit system had slowly sunk into darkness, until the moment when suddenly, securities, secured by mortgages of ordinary Americans, didn’t go down. And it all twisted up - investors fled to turn their fat profits in crisp cash, which in turn led to a liquidity crisis which became the subject of talks during the summer.

However, as a lot was happening on the western edge of the world economy, billing giant WebMoney in Russia broke the point of 5 million users as early as in March and regardless competitors, already in October added another million. In addition, in 2008, WebMoney payment system surprised the world with dramatic change in their attitude to exchange offices. And even though the audience is still guessing whether it was a smart move against competitors or WM was pressed down by the same structure, who had pressed down e-gold, but the exchange of business on the Internet has somewhat shaken.

It must be said that in addition to reckless dynamics of development, the financial business online has been trembled the whole year. Not to mention the endless maintenance of protracted DDoS-holidays of such payment systems as Liberty Reserve and Pecunix, in 2008 we have watched from the first rows how payment giants E-gold, E-bullion, as well as smaller players, cg-pay, AlterGold have collapsed.

And if the situation with the latest had no impact on global e-finance of the world, the collapse of e-gold and e-bullion should be recalled in details.

In regard to «Gold-e» that has already become familiar to people, its fortune had left, when in July 2008 three leaders of e-gold have been found guilty of money laundering and illegal transactions, involving fines and imprisonment.

For e-bullion the story was more exciting, namely the decline of the payment system began with the murder of the wife a man named James Faed, who with his wife Pamela Faed owned the payment system E-bullion. Then the script was simple, Faeda put into custody, his wife was buried, and people who have in the remaining a total of a few million dollars, hopelessly frozen, in the end were given only a dream about taking the funds. In addition, users of e-bullion were left with an idle site on which not updated saver hang for a very long time that the site does not work.

In addition, RuPay payment system finished its existence in 2008, going into the holding of RBC company. All assets and customer base of Rupay were received by a payment system with a brand of RBKmoney, which has shown at the forefront of its actions that in runet and in a segment of the CIS-internet there is a «special PayPal». Learning what all of this will lead to will be possible later, but during the several months there were more than 5000 plastic card registered into RBKMoney already that is a good indicator for a young starting billing system, which is surrounded by competitors from all sides.

We can not fail to remember about the intrigue with the payment system Fethard, whose return date- 12 September - was discussed no less than Medvedev’s elections as a president in March. However, it should be said that the miracle has not happened, all the funds were not unblocked, though some certainly were provided an opportunity to withdraw, and there is great merit of its founder in that.

The appearance on the horizon of young payment systems is also worth noting. All of us could see how Numox, AlterGold, Perfect Money and EcuMoney were forced their ways into the market. The first two so did not succeed, but the success of the last two can not be overseen. A particularly thorough has come into the Russian market Perfect Money, conducting a massive promotion policy in the Internet media, forums, blogs and other resources. Unlike EcuMoney Russian version of the interface Perfect Money has been very clear to understand. 2009 will show whether Runet will appreciate this payment instrument that came to us from the west.

The appearance and decline of the payment systems, as well as the operations of many market players in 2008 has repeatedly led to high volatility of exchange rates of electronic currency, that are captured by their jumps of tens percentages of already unstable situation with the exchange of e-currencies. We remember the dance of Fethard value, of e-gold, e-bullion, and all those currencies that were banned by webmoney for exchanging to its title characters. From all this we can conclude that the market of electronic finance has continued to remain very volatile and possession of large balances in payment systems can be very dangerous.

The exchange industry in 2008 was also extended to a new tool that enables users to exchange electronic currency according to the value that is most beneficial to the people themselves. It is a service Trainex Stock, in which each customer can set the percentage share and the amount of money he wants to buy or swap. Since then, it is only left to wait when another client og Trainex Stock will be interested in request and commit the transaction.

As for the real currency, the 2008 has brought us no fewer worries than the virtual money. Already in spring, everyone believed that the decline era of green currency, which even broke the rate of 23 rubles, constantly striving to sink lower and lower, came. However, world liquidity crisis intervened in the situation, which, with the collapse of world stock markets, led investors around the world to put their money in cash equivalents. This resulted in a shortage of currency and the dollar steadily went up. At the end of the year, it suddenly began to lose positions, but when financial collapse is around the corner, the mentality of the population of many countries pushes them to buying the dollar, this keeps the exchange rate. However, external debt of the state of U.S., andproblems with production and financial system sooner or later will lead people to believe that “green currency” is not assured, and therefore has no real value in the foreign exchange market. Thus, we finished 2008 with time bombs at hands.

At the height of autumn 2008, when the crisis was already active in the left cerebral hemisphere of population, a crisis of mobile payments occurred in Russia. A giant and a main player «Russian billing», which not only made mobile billing an accessible service that allows reducing the time of withdrawal of earnings for webmasters within a minimum time, but also gave us stability and confidence in the fact that the mobile payments market is developing, has left the market.

Turning back to the global financial and economic crisis, it must be said that no developments in the virtual environment can obscure what American scion did to the world. We enter the 2009 with currency portfolios, in which euro and the dollar have sharply appreciated, with shares dropping tens percentages of their value and with the world's depressive mood and attitude towards life which cannot be called anything except collapse, well disguised by TV officers, as problems that will be recovered soon.

Definitely, you cannot give up, you must have the patience and understanding of what industries will always be making money, not suffering from the crisis. And it is important to understand what the very Internet will allow us to survive the crisis. Despite everything, people will not leave the network, they will just like always require information, and they will also need to make purchases, which are now cheaper to do online than in reality. This means IT-industry should wait from 2009 only positive dynamics, only encouraging the growth and only increase in revenues! Everything will certainly be OK, it is only necessary to set horns as a bull, symbolizing the 2009th year, and we should go ahead not giving up!

Tell your opinion