I really like this point. It's easy to say that "Slack solves the problem of centralized team communication" or "eBay and Etsy help everyday people collect money off their trinkets, crafts, or useless old clothes". But bigger inventions don't solve a small, narrowly-defined problem: they totally change the game. You can't sum up the impact of the automobile, antiseptic or the internet in a sentence, because these inventions caused a cascade of other inventions that solve other problems.

Cars weren't released out of the blue by a well-funded startup as a half-baked MVP, they were built off of advances in industrial metallurgy, the invention of the engine, engineering used in trains and boats. Similarly, the internet didn't just happen - people first figured out electrical engineering, circuit boards, GUI's, COBOL and C++ and a myriad of other languages that made it possible to invent the internet.

I'm not saying that this online bank thingie is on that level yet. But for me, these kind of inventions are indicative of the death of institutional finance. The first step in destroying global finance as an institution is to whittle away at where the banks can make profit. Apps like Robin Hood have already helped to decentralize knowledge and participation in the stock market. Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin have shown at least a proof of concept that you don't need central banks to have currency. Money transfer apps like TransferWise eliminate currency conversion profiteering. Now what happens when you make a front-end that can wire all of these ideas together? A cashless society? Maybe.