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Unpopular opinion: why do we care so much about making it cheaper for rich people to move money around? Do we think somehow that will “trickle down” to us mere
by ipython 6y ago
Unpopular opinion: why do we care so much about making it cheaper for rich people to move money around? Do we think somehow that will “trickle down” to us mere mortals and put western union and their ilk out of business?
- whb07 6y agobecause the poor people can't move $10 around without paying $3 for it. Have you ever tried moving small amounts of money in poor countries ?
- joosters 6y agoHave you not heard of M-Pesa? Very popular mobile phone-based money transfer service, low fees (far less than $3 or the 30% you claim), you can even pay companies directly with it
- whb07 6y agoYes I've heard of it. So bitcoin is this but better. I agree with you.
- joosters 6y agoFaster than bitcoin, cheaper than bitcoin, easier to use than bitcoin, more reliable than bitcoin, far more widely accepted than bitcoin. Hmm...
- Ar-Curunir 6y agolol even the main people behind Bitcoin Core development have abandoned the idea of Bitcoin serving as means of day-to-day small transactions.
- whb07 6y agoWhy would it be the responsibility of one layer to deal with another layer?
- Ar-Curunir 6y agoThis separation of layers nonsense is only something that’s been proposed to cover up flaws in the core protocol. The original paper didn’t envision a store of value, but rather a means of daily transactions
- whb07 6y agoPerhaps. But while Satoshi is clearly a genius. Give the guy a break, he’s not a fortune teller. Many current day protocols have improvements needed but that’s besides the point.
- jermier 6y ago> he’s not a fortune teller Many have speculated he may be a time traveler, although they don't give any reason. The only thing I can think of is he possibly traveled back in time after witnessing a massive economic downturn that had people eating rats off the street and an even further (much more serious) dichotomy of rich and poor. Bitcoin could level the playing field stopping banks from having nearly full monopoly of your money.
- londons_explore 6y agoIf you want to convert it to real cash, the fee is pretty substantial...
- ipython 6y agoThat’s my point, however you said it clearer than I did. I don’t see how bitcoin making it easy for billionaires to move money equates to poor people being able to use it to move $10.
- dmix 6y agoBitcoin makes it easy for people with a billion dollars in bitcoin to move it around (or any value). There’s no way it’s then suddenly a cost effective way for normal currency billionaires to move money around. Converting that amount to BTC would require serious fees and resources. So this point is largely moot to any wider discussion.
- harpratap 6y agoNot really sure which poor countries you are talking about but in India the smaller the amount, the cheaper it is to transfer. <10k INR is most simplest transaction you can do by simply downloading any payment app and using UPI. >100k INR is where transaction costs usually creep in.
- lawn 6y agoI see the benefit as making it cheaper for everyone to move money around. And make no mistake, Bitcoin has much larger fees than other cryptocurrencies.
- regulation_d 6y agoI don't care about Western Union. I do care about Visa and MasterCard. And I'm definitely not saying that the current generation of crypto has figured this problem out, but I am hopeful for the sake of SMB that they won't always have to pay 3% fees on cashless transactions.
- ipython 6y agoI would agree with you but all I see from “big tech” is further middlemen and more fees- orders of magnitude larger than 3%!! Want to order food online? That’ll be 30% on top of your order, please. Oh, you wanted to pay for some bits through our app on your iPhone? Apple will take 30% of that too, thank you very much. We just switched HOA management companies and they had the audacity to charge a three dollar convenience fee if you pay your bill online! So I will just continue to pay via paper check and make life miserable for them because that incurs no fee. All I see is hypocrisy and more hands in my pocket wanting my money, not less.
- foepys 6y agoThe EU limited CC transaction fees to 0.3%. That's the reason why there are no cashback deals for CC here.
- _jal 6y agoEven more unpopular opinion: humans should be as free as capital. Making capital transfers easy while restricting the movement of real people ghettoizes and traps people for corporate convenience and cost savings.
- as300 6y agoCalling nationalities and cultures that arise from a group of people being forced to live together a "ghettoization" is a bit of a stretch
- anm89 6y agoEvery time you read an opinion regarding financial markets that mentions abstractly how something "should" be. You can know to disregard that opinion.
- centimeter 6y ago
- knocte 6y agoThose are two questions, not an opinion.
- rudolph9 6y agoThe ship has sailed for bitcoin as an everyday currency and it has turned more into a store of value than a currency. However, the crypto world is diverse, still infant, and has many applications beyond currency. Look at IPFS (libp2p, IPLD, Multiformats); it’s open source free software that allows user to view content without it being censored. Filecoin (the currency) exists on top but is completely independent and unnecessary to make use of the underlying utility of IPFS. While bitcoin is a bit of a monolith even it has utility beyond currency as you can write information along with your transactions. An example is [ION][1] an identity service pegging state to transactions wiring to the blockchain and so long as bitcoin holds value you can have high certainty this information will not go away or be modified. There are trade-offs to everything but often the benefit of crypto projects is lost when they’re viewed as currency rather than utility. Look at the forest not the trees. [1]: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-active-directory-identity/toward-scalable-decentralized-identifier-systems/ba-p/560168 https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-active-director...
- anm89 6y agoNo one cares if you care. They care. So stop caring and move on to whatever it is you want to do with your life.
- mindcandy 6y agoRemittances are one of the big, obvious use cases where crypto can save poor people a ton of money. To the tune of a collective $40-50 billion a year. https://academy.binance.com/blockchain/blockchain-use-cases-remittance https://academy.binance.com/blockchain/blockchain-use-cases-...
- hocuspocus 6y agoCall me when a blockchain-backed remittance service reaches even a small fraction of the customer-base of companies like Transferwise or CurrencyFair. If it was an efficient way to cut on fees, everyone would do it. Yet almost nobody does.
- Karunamon 6y agoThat strikes me as more of an implementation detail. Day-to-day cryptocurrency use still requires a level of technical sophistication my grandma isn't comfortable with.
- hocuspocus 6y agoIt is. So why don't remittance services do it behind the scenes?
- notahacker 6y agoBecause the converting currency X to crypto to currency Y is certainly not going to be cheaper or less volatile than a remittance service's existing forex setup which skips the middle bit, and it introduces a risky counterparty in the form of crypto exchanges.
- ashtonkem 6y agoFundamentally bitcoin (and most other cryptos) are trying to fill two mutually exclusive goals. On one hand, they’re supposed to be the currency of the future; on the other you’re supposed to invest or trade in them like a speculative instrument to grow your net worth (hodl, mooning, lambos, etc.) The issue is that these two can’t be filled by the same instrument effectively. Currencies need to be stable and predictable, nobody wants to discover that their paycheck has suddenly halved in value. They can inflate, but they should do that in a slow and steady manner so wages can keep up. On the other hand you want some volatility in your speculative instruments, as without volatility there’s no real opportunity to earn a profit and grow your net worth. If something tries to be both, the results are disappointing. Either there’s no enough volatility to make traders happy, or there’s enough volatility to expose laborers or payment processors (depending on use case) to purchasing power shocks or conversion rate risks. Unfortunately, it’s my belief that bitcoin maintains a lot of its value by trying to continually bring in new suckers (sorry, investors) in order to keep demand high without significant use cases. This kind of continual recruitment process is both fascinating, and really ruins bitcoin for anyone who wanted to use it for non-speculative purposes.
- newguy1234 6y agoCrypto has use cases for the average joe as well.
- totalZero 6y agoTransaction fees disproportionately limit small transactions.
- zaarn 6y agoMy bank doesn't require transaction fees until the value hits 10k€, after which it's 5€ (1€ fee + 4€ insurance).
- stale2002 6y agoWire transfers, between banks, can cost something like 20-50$ depending on who you are transferring too, and if it is across countries. Rich people don't have to care about a 20$ fee. Poor people do though.
- bane 6y agoImagine if Bitcoin worked by "taxing" transfers and evenly distributing that tax to every other wallet.