I am writing this from a small café in a nice little residential neighborhood. Some kids a are playing on the streets, people are passing for their evening stroll through the green avenues. Sometimes somebody stops right next to the café and screams up to the balcony next door. After a few words back and forth a small basket is let down. The person takes a bag out of it, puts some money in and walks away. Turns out, there is a women selling delicious ice cream from her apartment in the second floor to people on the street. 

People are trading if we can!

And here is the thing...this happens while I am researching for possibilities to start an online business from <insert still most of the countries of this world> and market to the world. - impossible. It is still unbelievably hard for the average small business outside of maybe USA and EU to sell stuff online. incredible! in 2016! And I mean it is the internet...!

The problem is not logistics, or whatever but accepting online payments. Making it possible to transfer value from buyer to seller. Most of the time value is represented by some numbers in some databases anyway these days... so why is that so hard and preventing people from trading?!
I guess I know that global money flow is supposed to be complex and full of middlemen ;)
But It really bothers me is that it it still the main problem for individuals and small business to trade online. 

We need to remove the middlemen. 

Meet OpenBazaar...and Bitcoin...

OpenBazaar (docs) - is a new way to buy and sell goods and services online. By running a program on your computer, you can connect directly to other users in the OpenBazaar network and trade with them. OpenBazaar is a decentralised peer-to-peer network. It directly connects buyer and seller through the internet. Read this blog post to find more about it.
Bitcoin is used for payments between buyer and seller directly.

No middlemen preventing people from trading! 

With more tools that directly connect people becoming available and usable I am confident that trading online will become more like the women selling her products from the balcony to the people on the street.