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The permissionless nature does enable some use cases where the overhead associated with the classical solutions makes them impractical. With Bitcoin, anyone ca
by tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
The permissionless nature does enable some use cases where the overhead associated with the classical solutions makes them impractical.
With Bitcoin, anyone can start a cash-to-bitcoin/bitcoin-to-cash office. All you need is a phone with Internet.
Could Western Union solve the same problem? In theory, yes, in practice, the overhead cost of joining the network means the guy with a phone in some remote village isn't going to do it.
This is obviously mostly relevant where the classic solutions aren't already ubiquitous. Want to wire money from Germany to France? Just use SEPA. Want to wire money from Germany to the US? You're probably better off with some traditional money transfer service like TransferWise or (for bigger amounts) a Forex/brokerage account.
Want to "wire" money from a remote village in Africa to a remote village in Asia? That's where you might benefit from your neighbor having set up a physical crypto exchange.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jasonlaramburu 6y agoThe remote African Village use case is already solved by mobile money solutions like M-Pesa, which are cheap and easy to use via SMS or low-end feature phones. The cost of buying a smartphone with data plan to use a BTC wallet is prohibitively expensive for most people in developing countries.
- lawn 6y agoNaturally you don't verify the blockchain yourself, but use a light wallet that uses very little data. And you don't use BTC as the fees are way too expensive. This is what people are doing in Venezuela for example.
- jasonlaramburu 6y agoOK but are there any secure BTC or alt coin wallets (even light wallets) that will work on feature phones or SMS? Very few people in in remote villages can afford even the most basic Android smartphone. What incentive would they have to switch from M-PESA (or Alipay/wechatpay in Asia) that is already secure, cheap and widely accepted. Cryptocurrency is a fascinating technology and social experiment but so far has no unique use case other than speculation.
- lawn 6y agoNot that I know of. The real use-case is transferring to and from places that you cannot normally do. Smartphones are prevalent in Venezuela for example, but it's basically impossible to send money in or out unless you use cryptocurrencies. The charity eatBCH uses this to give food to Venezuelans for example: https://eatbch.org/ https://eatbch.org/. I think that's a pretty unique use case.
- jasonlaramburu 6y agoYou can already send money from US to Venezuela using Moneygram and several other services cheaply. There are relatively few countries where sanctions prohibit Americans from sending money, and cryptocurrency would not make this legal.
- lawn 6y agoYou cannot send USD to Venezuela, only Bolivars, which isn't so good as hyperinflation will kill most of the value instantly. One of the point of cryptocurrencies is that some countries may think certain things are illegal, but that doesn't make them wrong. To me helping to feed starving Venezuelans by sending them help directly is morally right, even if it was illegal.
- jasonlaramburu 6y agoI agree that the hyperinflation in VZ is a problem, but is that solved by Crypto? BTC's prices is highly volatile as well. In a bear market, there can be significant price slippage even while the recipient is waiting for a BTC transaction to confirm.
- lawn 6y agoHighly volatile, absolutely. Yet it's nothing compared to hyperinflation. In May 2019 prices in Venezuela doubled in only two days... every day. While Bitcoin is volatile it's relatively stable compared to what Venezuela and Lebanon are going through today.