3 ms·

> practical usefulness of being able to share data across the USA Replace "data" with "money", and "USA" with "anywhere in the world"... do you see any value i

• beefield 8y ago
  Funny. I have been able to send money cross-border relatively cheaply and relatively fast for quite some time. So yes, obviously I see value in that. But actually it has never been any kind of issue that would have even crossed my mind that it would need some fancy new solutions to enable me to do that. Would you be willing to share some more details on which kind of money transactions this is an actual unsolved problem? Where from/to are you trying to transfer the money and what are you buying/selling with that money?
  • anjc 8y ago
    This is the most obvious use-case. Try to send any amount of money outside of business hours from an account in one country to any account in another. You can't do it! You can't even send funds from an account in one bank, to an account in the SAME bank, if it's across a border. I had this problem one time over a long-weekend, and the only solution I had was to use Western Union. Because I didn't warn my bank that I wanted to use my own money, they disabled my account until they were open again (3 days). > relatively fast Maybe 5 days is relatively fast to you, but it's not to me. 1 horsepower was relatively fast to people before cars were common also.
• simias 8y ago
  There's a big problem though, we already have many ways to do that. They have flaws but they are mature and generally pretty easy to use. Cryptocurrencies are not breaking new ground, they're trying to offer an alternative. That's a very different proposition. It's not enough for cryptocurrencies to work, they have to work better than "fiat". So far I'm unimpressed.