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The 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 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 ago
Naturally 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 ago
  OK 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 ago
    Not 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 ago
      You 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 ago
        You 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 ago
        I 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 ago
        Highly 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.
  - kainaloo 6y ago
    allowing millions of people to actually own something for the first time ever.

lawn 6y ago

Naturally 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 ago
OK 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 ago
  Not 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 ago
    You 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 ago
      You 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 ago
        I 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 ago
        Highly 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.
- kainaloo 6y ago
  allowing millions of people to actually own something for the first time ever.