This article is ridiculous and doesn't even have anything to do with Coin.
The first half isn't even criticizing Coin at all -- it's just saying the author wishing there were even better things. The author says "The problem with these technologies is vendor adoption. It’s not here yet, but it’s on the way." Yeah, it's been on the way for the past 10 years, but nothing's changed yet! I don't see RFID/NFC anywhere I shop. But that's not any reason for Coin not to improve things in the here-and-now.
And the second half has nothing to do with Coin itself either, but is about Kickstarter charging in general.
> Yeah, it's been on the way for the past 10 years, but nothing's changed yet!
Along with transistor counts, other technologies follow a Moore's Law like improvement curve. Network (bandwidth) technologies are among those, but they have a strong step-function characteristic to their improvement. This accounts for the delay in end-to-end deployment of hardware improvements needed. This also creates a perception of sustained changelessness followed by rapid change (e.g. dialup modems to DSL/Cable).
Any improvement to payment infrastructure suffers from a much more entrenched form of the network upgrade problem. This stasis works to the benefit of companies (e.g. Square) who can provide value without having to move the world. Coin also fits into this opportunity/risk model.
The risk, which that quote hits on, is that Coin is already too late: if a payment network transformation lands too soon, it could leave Coin's bright idea in the dust. In that light, saying "it's been on the way for the past 10 years" is more worrying rather than less.
But there are upsides. Imagine that Coin grows into its meta-card future, eventually supporting EMV[1] as well as easy revocability and reissuance. Lose your Coin? A quick report and it's revoked and all of your cards are reissued onto a new Coin.
[1] Per Coin's FAQ, they do not support EMV, aka "chip and pin", yet. This is problematic for non-U.S. usage: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMV
> And the second half has nothing to do with Coin itself either, but is about Kickstarter charging in general.
Well, no, its about a company pretending to be doing normal product ordering but actually doing a do-it-yourself Kickstarter, and how they may fall afoul of various rules, like those of the credit cards they are accepting, in doing that.
The first half isn't even criticizing Coin at all -- it's just saying the author wishing there were even better things. The author says "The problem with these technologies is vendor adoption. It’s not here yet, but it’s on the way." Yeah, it's been on the way for the past 10 years, but nothing's changed yet! I don't see RFID/NFC anywhere I shop. But that's not any reason for Coin not to improve things in the here-and-now.
And the second half has nothing to do with Coin itself either, but is about Kickstarter charging in general.