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While away on vacation, I once sent $1000 in cold hard cash, on a Sunday, to an unbanked person in Los Angeles, in less than 1 hour, thanks to bitcoin and the r

• bl557 6y ago
  https://twitter.com/gladstein/status/1357757736394444800 https://twitter.com/gladstein/status/1357757736394444800
• bryanlarsen 6y ago
  Western Union has been doing this for > 150 years.
  • cassianoleal 6y ago
    I don't know where you are but in a lot of places to use Western Union you have to physically go to one of their stores. With BTC I can buy them via the internet, and the person on the other side can also convert to cash in their own account via the internet, then withdraw on any ATM. It's worlds apart. Edit: I guess if you only consider the parent's use-case where the other person went to a Bitcoin ATM it's not that different but my point stands as it's only 1 other layer in the process and it's an online one.
    • macspoofing 6y ago
      For now. Cryptocurrency is still in the 'honeymoon' phase where it hasn't been fully targeted by governments and regulatory bodies. That will change soon enough. You can't skirt AML regulations forever.
      • cassianoleal 6y ago
        That's a fair thing to worry about with cryptos in general but it has nothing to do with either my comment or its parent.
        • macspoofing 6y ago
          Yes it does. Any simplicity with moving money that BTC gives you is solely due to the fact that it doesn't follow AML regulations. That will end.
  • latchkey 6y ago
    Have you ever tried to use Western Union while in a foreign country? I did it in Vietnam. Everything was a barrier. Language, paperwork, carrying cash around safely, time and finally most importantly, fees. No thanks.
    • bryanlarsen 6y ago
      The parent said that bitcoin was a "paradigm shift". Being slightly more convenient is not a "paradigm shift".
      • latchkey 6y ago
        You did not answer the question. I just gave you no less than 6 reasons! Slightly is an understatement.
      • lottin 6y ago
        > Being slightly more convenient And even that is debatable.
        • nwah1 6y ago
          The inconvenience of existing services boils down mainly to issues such as ensuring that fraud and terrorism and such are prevented. Society intentionally added those hurdles. A new technology that has ignored the regulatory structure is not apples to apples. Someone could ignore regulations with current tech and be just as "convenient."
          • latchkey 6y ago
            Number one currency for 'fraud' is good old paper USD. You don't need digital assets to commit fraud.
    • notahacker 6y ago
      I've used Western Unions in Morocco and a village in rural Laos where the staff couldn't believe I was a slightly lost passing tourist and invited me for dinner with them. Both of them were easy: the most difficult bit about the Moroccan service was using my UK bank's online banking service to set the transfer up. I didn't see any Bitcoin ATMs in either place, or Vietnam for that matter, and can't imagine the process of turning Bitcoin into spendable currency there would be easier, especially not for somebody without a local bank account.
  • diegoperini 6y ago
    In places (such as here, Turkey) where local currency has much less value than the USD, Western Union is simply beyond affordable.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  • freeplay 6y ago
    Western Union is a nightmare to use. You need send and pickup in a physical location, sometimes the recipient needs specific forms of ID, and the fees are insane. I once sent $100 to someone in South America and it cost me $13. WU is a relic that targets and takes advantage of the less fortunate and those in 3rd world countries.
    • gorbypark 6y ago
      To be fair, the current average Bitcoin transaction fee is around $13 right now, so it would cost a similar amount, or even double if there’s two transactions involved (you -> recipient -> withdrawal exchange).
      • abc_lisper 6y ago
        Are btc’s 13 dollars fixed costs? Because western union’s arent
        • BlackInkstoan 6y ago
          The transaction costs are variable depending on the speed with which you want your transaction processed. Miners have an incentive to include transactions with the highest fees in the next block, so when the network is congested with tons of unprocessed transactions, you'll be paying more. And that's only looking at on-chain mechanics. Solutions exist to remedy issues with scalability of the underlying blockchain.
          • abc_lisper 6y ago
            Interesting. Does it mean Bitcoin is not immune to DOS attacks where basically me and my friend transfer 0.0000001 btc between each other repeatedly for giggles.
            • SamBam 6y ago
              My understanding is that the miners would have no incentive to include the transaction, and so each transfer would take a long time to be processed.
  • mrb 6y ago
    Recipient was at the time banned from WU
  • luizparreira 6y ago
    Have you ever used Western Union? The experience is horrendous, and they charge very high fees. Maybe they have improved lately with competition, but when I had to use it a few years ago, it was horrible and I ended up not having money for the rest of my trip because they messed up my papers. Bitcoin is orders of magnitude better than western union.
• londons_explore 6y ago
  But your example use case will be made illegal soon - that bitcoin ATM won't be allowed to give cash to an unbanked person without them providing their birth certificate, passport, 3 forms of utility bill and a driving license, then waiting 3 days for identity verification to complete.
• lm28469 6y ago
  > While away on vacation, I once sent $1000 in cold hard cash, on a Sunday, to an unbanked person in Los Angeles, in less than 1 hour, thanks to bitcoin and the recipient withdrawing it for cash at a Bitcoin ATM. There is not a single alternative service in the world that would have made this possible. And this is reason enough to replace all other currencies with btc ? Because it's fast ? If people thought a little beyond their personal use cases, they would understand the NON utility of Bitcoin/crypto for most
  • FabHK 6y ago
    > Because it's fast ? Not that fast: for most purposes you have to wait about an hour. Not as fast as centralised fast systems.
    • WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
      2 confirmations is usually enough for most transactions. 6 confirmations guarantees the money will never be reversed.
  • mrb 6y ago
    «replace all other currencies with btc» What's up with this mindset that Bitcoin must REPLACE the existing system? As a Bitcoin user for 10+ years I always envisioned Bitcoin would simply co-exist with the rest. Your mind is too binary, my friend.
    • lm28469 6y ago
      > What's up with this mindset that Bitcoin must REPLACE the existing system? You tell me, I'm not the one who came up with it https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/34920/deutsche-bank-predicts-cryptocurrency-could-replace-fiat-by-2030 https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/34920/deutsche-bank-pre... https://cointelegraph.com/news/crypto-will-eventually-replace-fiat-but-how-soon-and-where https://cointelegraph.com/news/crypto-will-eventually-replac... https://www.forbes.com/sites/investor/2019/08/05/crypto-is-replacing-fiat-currency-in-troubled-countries/?sh=7985306059f3 https://www.forbes.com/sites/investor/2019/08/05/crypto-is-r... and hundreds of other articles...
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• noja 6y ago
  > There is not a single alternative service in the world that would have made this possible. Apart from any "send money to your relatives back home" service, sms banking in entire continents, or Hawala. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala
  • kseistrup 6y ago
    I agree. I regularly send money from Denmark to unbanked friends in shanty towns in Zambia through World Remit — it works 24/7 as fast as an sms. https://www.worldremit.com/en https://www.worldremit.com/en
    • uberswe 6y ago
      I didn't know about these services and it's great that they exist. What makes bitcoin different is that it eliminates the need to trust a third party such as a bank to handle the transaction.
      • the-dude 6y ago
        You just need a Bitcoin ATM in every shanty town. Easy.
        • notahacker 6y ago
          Even then, you'd have to trust the third party that maintains the ATMs...
          • the-dude 6y ago
            Whoosh?
            • notahacker 6y ago
              I wasn't sure whether the snark was for the size of the logistical hurdles the much-hyped "trustless solutions for the unbanked" face or the proposed solutions invariably involving some sort of bank, but it's always worth underlining the latter part...
• kwanbix 6y ago
  I send 1000 euros per month to another person on a monthly basis using an app called Remitly. It charges me a fixed fee of 3.99 IIRC. It arrives within the hour to her bank account. 24 hours at most. There are many others like it, Azimo, and even WU has an app. I don't see what is so special about what you say or I am missing something.
  • qqii 6y ago
    > unbanked Imagine the same situation but the other person doesn't have a bank account.
    • kwanbix 6y ago
      you can send it to different pick up locations.
    • GizmoSwan 6y ago
      How are they cashing bit coin to eat? The conversion has occur somewhere or they whole world has to accept bit coin and participate in tax evasion schemes by being so called unbanked. There is limit to bit coin usage and alike and they will eventually hit the limitation and regulation. The unbanked people are not buying Tesla. They will pay the tax.
• cateye 6y ago
  Do you really think this is a technical limitation of the current banking systems and a missing "feature"? Or is it the Bitcoin technology that "solves" this? The whole reason that it is not allowed to send money to an anonymous person is... Well don't actually know where to start explaining it. Anti money laundering? Counter-terrorism financing? Financial transaction reporting?
  • mlcrypto 6y ago
    Luckily this is the year where we can stop arguing with the haters. If you haven't figured it out yet, I can't help you. The price speaks for itself
  • BurningFrog 6y ago
    I think we agree on the facts. In the regular banking system, every transaction has to be approved by the authorities to happen. With Bitcoin, just like cash, you can freely transfer it as you please. The disagreement is if that is good or bad.
  • aeternum 6y ago
    Yes, the ability to control the currency and who people send money to is powerful and can be used for good, but often isn't. Just look at Venezuela, Zimbabwe, or all the other nations that inflated their currency out of existence or used it to fund genocides. Perhaps nations would be less likely/able to do things like this if citizens were able to flee without leaving behind their life savings.
  • BlueTemplar 6y ago
    Since every bitcoin transaction is recorded, law enforcement is rather helped. There are "mixers" that supposedly allow to make it harder to figure out, but that didn't stop them from busting Silk Road !
    • chrischen 6y ago
      The grandparent's use case of laundering it through an ATM in fact circumvents this.
• camjohnson26 6y ago
  There’s utility in Bitcoin but also massive scaling problems that haven’t been tackled yet. It has long term potential, but you have to separate that from the asset bubble that’s inflating everything these days. If you don’t see the parallels between bitcoin’s price and Tesla’s stock price you haven’t been paying attention to what’s happening in the economy. Hope this illustrates that Tesla’s commitment to clean energy is shallow, and their real commitment is to easy to manipulate financial securities.
  • gbersac 6y ago
    The bitcoin lightning network address this issue. It already works, adoption is slowly increasing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_Network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_Network
    • Leherenn 6y ago
      It's something I don't really understand, doesn't Lightning scale by bypassing what makes bitcoin what it is: the proof of work and no trust system? It seems with Lightning you are back to having to check every transaction, and because it's painful, the trust mechanism is being centralised. It's seems to me we are almost back to square one then (though at least in theory you can control everything yourself and do not have to distribute the trust).
      • RustyRussell 6y ago
        No. It entirely relies on the guarantee that you can spend the Bitcoin transactions. Secure in that knowledge, it doesn't have to for every small transaction.
• macspoofing 6y ago
  >There is not a single alternative service in the world that would have made this possible. Are you kidding me? >If people thought a little beyond their personal use cases, they would understand the utility of Bitcoin/crypto for many others. What use case is that? Skirting AML regulations? You think governments will allow that?
  • mrb 6y ago
    «What use case is that?» Sending money to an unbanked person in severe financial hardship, for food & shelter. Nothing else worked. Not WU. Not TW.
    • macspoofing 6y ago
      I understand the convenience of skirting AML regulations when sending money. I'm saying that's not a real use-case because it's going to go away when government and regulatory bodies crack down on it.
      • mrb 6y ago
        «it's going to go away when» I've been hearing that for 10 years. From a purely compliance/surveillance viewpoint, government authorities tend to prefer Bitcoin over cash, because they can monitor and run all sorts of analytics on the Bitcoin blockchain, which is not 100% anonymous, but merely pseudonymous. Compare this to cash transactions which are offline, untraceable. If you asked me to bet whether most democracies would crack down and ban Bitcoin within the next few decades, I'd confidently say "not going to happen".
        • macspoofing 6y ago
          Agree to disagree on this point. I cannot imagine a reality where governments (democratic or undemocratic) will allow tax evasion, money laundering, and terrorism funding to just happen because "they can monitor and run all sorts of analytics on the Bitcoin blockchain".
• Jsharm 6y ago
  The fees alone must have been astronomical. I was astounded that it took 4 hours last week for a transfer of mine to confirm (4 confirmations were required for the broker to recognise it as legit). And I'd paid $15 in fees!
  • qqii 6y ago
    This is one of the major issues with Bitcoin that'll probably remain unsolved on the main network. As far as I'm concerned at this point the core bitcoin model is impossible to change - any large changes will simply split the community as seen with Bitcoin Cash. We've had the Lighting Network but that's not seen good adoption and has it's own problems. Sadly Bitcoin has first mover's advantage, name recognition and good reputation that can't be replicated by other more innovative solutions. Can I ask why you chose Bitcoin specifically to make the transfer?
• GizmoSwan 6y ago
  To an unbanked! person in Los Angeles? In a black market? It is taxable in your hand as well as theirs. So any tax avoidance agenda makes the trade illegal.
  • byerobh 6y ago
    Lol and who will punish it? Love this thing, might be the thing that saves the world from collectivists.
    • GizmoSwan 6y ago
      Participating in illegal activities does not make the coin more valuable but rather makes illegal transactions possible and criminalized the bit coin trade and hence soon it will become regulated. So it is not like a bank transfer which is legit.
      • byerobh 6y ago
        Your first statement is flat out wrong. Illegality is actually a driver of prices in all sorts of activity. See drug prices now, alcohol during the Prohibition. (Also, and this is more of a style and culture matter, learn about run-on sentences. They're one of those things that got cut in us-landia colleges.) Obviously, it is "not like a bank transfer". Then again, that you personally have never seen anything like it, makes no difference in its actual legitimacy or usefulness as a medium of transaction.
• JamesBarney 6y ago
  How large is the population of people who are both unbanked but sophisticated enough to use bitcoin? 95% of the population is banked, but only 11% own bitcoin. https://www.fdic.gov/analysis/household-survey/index.html https://www.fdic.gov/analysis/household-survey/index.html
  • qqii 6y ago
    Specifically the US population, this number is much less globally.
  • mrb 6y ago
    Recipient didn't have to use Bitcoin. He walked up to an ATM and just read me the instructions (address) to transfer the Bitcoin to the ATM. He didn't even have a Bitcoin wallet or anything.
• iagovar 6y ago
  You can do that with SEPA? I mean, I just send money to my landlord every 1st day of the month, and I got it automated in my bank page. And every bank account I had has this.
  • qqii 6y ago
    SEPA only covers the EU and a few EU aligned countries.
  • mrb 6y ago
    No. Recipient was unbanked, under severe financial hardship.
• Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  I'm not claiming that a low-latency, no-borders, truly international digital currency is a bad thing. The main issue with Bitcoin is a complete lack of oversight. As a currency it's dreadful, suffering from tens of thousands of percent in deflation (= value increased relative to the cost of goods). As a trade product it's terrible, suffering from a lack of oversight from e.g. the SEC, opening it up to price manipulation (see MtGox creating artificial demand, the Tether money printer, the smaller crypto's being fucked around with by traders who have enough money to throw around to influence the price, and the meme coins being influenced by Elon Musk making a tweet about it (although afaik he can't be accused of manipulation directly, this time).
  • usehackernews 6y ago
    Bitcoin is 12 years old. It’s very very young. Problems will be addressed as it matures. Further, every currency has problems. Is USD perfect in your mind and without it’s own unique set of issues?
    • phlo 6y ago
      Let's look at the Euro as a better¹ example, and let's take 2002 as the start date². One year into its existence, a Pan-European Clearinghouse provided clearing services for participating countries. Six years into its existence, in 2008, credit transfers and direct debit are operational across the SEPA area, meaning roughly that international payments are on par with domestic payments (i.e. no fees, 1-2 days wait time). Eight years into its existence, SEPA transfers have become the dominant form of electronic payments in the Eurozone. Since 2017 (fifteen years in), anyone with a SEPA bank account can send money to anyone else in the Area instantly³, and free of charge. Throughout this time: * The Euro didn't suffer hyperdeflation. * There are ways to recover payments that were sent to mistyped IBANs and/or were sent fraudulently. * Users who forgot their e-banking password can get a new one from their bank and not lose all of their assets. In 2019, SEPA processed about 22 billion credit transfers⁴. That's about 700 transactions per second, or about a hundred times more than the Bitcoin network is able to handle. SEPA also handled about the same number of direct debits, something that BTC doesn't offer. Best of all: SEPA did all that, without using approximately Chile's annual energy use. Bitcoin is amazing Sci-Fi, brought to life. It's a testament to Satoshi's genius, to a cyberpunk-y spirit, and to applying game theory in a system that actually kinda works. But given its immense costs for miners, users, and society overall, it's something that falls squarely on the dystopian side of sci-fi. ¹: Mainly because the Euro is a multinational project and not a national currency. And also a little bit because the US banking system is a bit of a mess. But mainly for the "international" aspect. ²: Technically, it was created in 1992 and could be used, in electronic form, from 2001 onward. Still, banknotes and coins were introduced in 2002, so that feels like a good starting point. ³: "10 seconds, or up to 20 seconds in some circumstances" ⁴: https://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/what-we-do/be-involved/sepa-payment-statistics https://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/what-we-do/be-involve...
• nly 6y ago
  The shitty American bank system doesn't make something that works slightly better a 'paradigm shift'. https://transferwise.com/gb/send-money/instant-money-transfer#how-long https://transferwise.com/gb/send-money/instant-money-transfe...
  • mrb 6y ago
    As I said in another comment: It's impossible for 2 new unverified users to sign up to TW and send money instantly within 1 hour, cash in hand. Lengthy verification steps, etc. So TW wouldn't have worked in our urgent situation.
    • nly 6y ago
      In many places you can't buy significant amounts of Bitcoin easily without following KYC / ID steps. The regulations aren't going to get any looser going forward, they will tighten.
      • eecks 6y ago
        That is not what is being discussed though.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• xadhominemx 6y ago
  Ok then what did they do with the Bitcoin you sent them
• ForHackernews 6y ago
  Western Union has made this possible for >50 years now.
• tiborsaas 6y ago
  > There is not a single alternative service in the world that would have made this possible. I work at TransferWise so I know that 34% of our transactions are now instant (less than 20 sec).
  • mrb 6y ago
    It's impossible for 2 new unverified users to sign up to your service and send money instantly within 1 hour, cash in hand. Lengthy verification steps, etc. So TW wouldn't have worked in our urgent situation.
    • mrb 6y ago
      Whoever downvoted me has obviously never tried to use TW.
      • e_proxus 6y ago
        Would this work with Bitcoin though? I mean cash-to-cash, not just the digital transfer.
        • mrb 6y ago
          Cash-to-cash in under an hour would definitely be possible but only if I had immediate access to a Bitcoin ATM (I would "withdraw" directly to the recipient, by giving my ATM the recipient's ATM's deposit address)
      • toomuchtodo 6y ago
        You're getting downvoted because it is getting easier by the day to not be unbanked, and "verification" will always exist due to nation state AML/KYC requirements.
        • mrb 6y ago
          Not exactly. Verification is needed because money transfers can be reversed (fraudulently, or legitimately in response to fraud), so remittance companies need to be reasonably sure to reduce fraud risk to an acceptable level. However with Bitcoin there is no need for verification because a transfer is irreversible.
• op03 6y ago
  I sent bitcoin to a coconut tree recently. People just dont get what is possible here.
• anthony_barker 6y ago
  The Remittance use case may be better handled by Stellar.org Bitcoin is the first time in history of a financial asset that no one can take from you plus you can send it. It is gold++
• kolinko 6y ago
  What you described is how a banking system in many countries works. I can send a wire transfer for free to any other person in Poland at 4am on saturday night, and they will get it instantly (some exceptions apply). I can even send them a direct code to withdraw a specific amount of money from most ATMs in the country, instantly and anonymously. (Could be to an unbanked person, but we don’t have those really - aside from some very senior citizens). What you described is not so much a flaw in the banking system in general, but in the US banking system specifically. Crypto has a ton of awesome use-cases - DeFi is the most promising one. Sending money to other people wirelessly can, and will, be solved by centralised institutions.
  • rnotaro 6y ago
    As far as i'm aware it's usually not the case in most countried. In canada we have Interac Online that allows you to send money instantly to anyone in the country but when it comes to international transfer it's usually really slow. (3-10 days). Bitcoin allows tou to send that money anywhere almost instantly.
  • capableweb 6y ago
    Great that it works like that in Poland. It doesn't work like that in most places in the rest of the world, and certainly not between X <> Y places in the world (for example, how long time would a US > Poland transfer take?). What cryptocurrencies enables is border-less transfers, where geographic location doesn't matter anymore, as long as you have a internet connection. > Sending money to other people wirelessly can, and will, be solved by centralised institutions I wish I could be as optimistic as you. I have been living in three different countries for the last 20 years and heard that "instant wire transfers anywhere in the world" is coming for the last 20 years. Seems only Instant SEPA has been doing some actual work, but it still doesn't even cover 50% of the world. And why wait for a centralized solution that might come 20 years in the future when you can use the decentralized solution that works today?
  • mrb 6y ago
    «how a banking system in many countries works» Recipient was unbanked (under severe financial hardship)
• yitchelle 6y ago
  Unless you are physically handling your $1000 cold hard cash from your hand to receiver's hand, there are many steps in the chain that could go wrong, and then it's gone.
• mam2 6y ago
  Revolut
• MuffinFlavored 6y ago
  > to an unbanked person Who in this modern era is unbanked and how did that unbanked person turn around and spend the $1,000 in BTC you sent them?
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • jiofih 6y ago
    He said “ATM”, they received it in cash.
  • BlueTemplar 6y ago
    Apparently the USA alone has 7 million unbanked households?
• jariel 6y ago
  This is generally a false assertion of the value of BTC and exemplifies the mythos generally perpetuated by groups that have actually little or no understanding of what currency actually is. + Sending actual cash from A to B is not a complicated process. + We usually use 'banks' for this process, generally for very good reason, in particular, regulatory compliance, security and especially concerns over fraud and money laundering. + That banks create essentially a layer of bureaucracy is not that great, however, it's mild relative to the propagation of unregulated currency. + BTC is neither a currency, nor a store of value - it's just monopoly money. It's not a currency because it can't be used in any economic system as a standard means of payment, and it's not a store of value for obvious reasons of volatility and no underlying inherent value. Literally any other classical store of value i.e. real estate, bonds, cash, commodities - are much better 'stores of value'. + Almost all of BTC's 'value' thus far expressed, comes down to either 1) playing speculative, Ponzi-like games where massively wealth individuals effectively control the market (defeating any notion of real distribution), or 2) skipping over regulatory concerns to do what amounts to illicit stuff, or 3) novelty and intellectual curiosity, which is nice, but not worth it. + The stated value of BTC which is to day 'hedge against debasement' unfortunately does not work. Currency is an essential thing for an economy, a 'super hard currency' (i.e. literally ever note backed by Gold) implies zero flexibility in the system and is guaranteed to cause serious strains on growth and/or very ugly deflationary spirals. And other problems. What we want, ideally is 'very smart monetary policy' that enables us to move the levers as necessary for everyone's well-being. During the COVID crisis, we would be in serious trouble without monetary policy levers, the economic calamity would be much worse if we were all using BTC for example. Obviously - having monetary policy, means a risk of debasement, such as we see in Venezuela, but Venezuela did not crash merely because of bad monetary policy - it was 'bad everything policy'. Venezuela faced economic collapse because every part of it's system was corrupted, including the Central Bank. There's a 100% chance, that even with a 'Gold Backed Currency' - that some entity in power will have had a chance to corrupt that system as well. For one - stealing the Gold. + Currency is a 'social contract'. It's a 'contract with the economy' and there is absolutely no getting away from the fact that it's somewhat intangible and fungible. $100USD basically means 'Americans owe you about this much'. That's it. This notion that you can 'hold $10B in your pocket' is kind of myth - it's only even possible due to the complex mechanization of financial markets and the banking system. You just can't sit on 'something' that's worth that much because there's far too going on in terms of comparative value - either that $10B represent assets that have to be managed, or, in a more long term store of value (like real-estate) whereupon even then the value will shift over time. + Some nice regulations to enable more fluid transfer of money would be nice. An instrument that was broadly backed by other things of value i.e. stocks, bonds, basked of currencies - and that which itself could be used as a 'global currency' would be nice as well. That could happen. But it may not have anything to do with blockchain. + Finally - Blockchain and decentralization - there's just no way getting around having to have trust in our institutions of various kinds. If they don't work, we all fall down. There's no magical way to wish that away and put trust in our pockets. Maybe better trust and transparency. Finally: I should note there's a 'disruptive' value in BTC I think. It's a 'demonstrative' meme that can help use 'see' the relative value of blockchain etc. in various scenarios.
• Kaze404 6y ago
  > While away on vacation, I once sent $1000 in cold hard cash, on a Sunday, to an unbanked person in Los Angeles, in less than 1 hour, thanks to bitcoin and the recipient withdrawing it for cash at a Bitcoin ATM. There is not a single alternative service in the world that would have made this possible. https://business.ebanx.com/en/resources/payments-explained/pix-instant-payment-system https://business.ebanx.com/en/resources/payments-explained/p...
• chrischen 6y ago
  There's a reason your use case is difficult to do and it has nothing to do with technology. It's difficult due to anti-money laundering laws and to prevent funding terrorism.
• rdsubhas 6y ago
  > The financial world is structured as it is because of its existing ~flaws~ regulation. > Bitcoin/crypto enables things that people don't know they need because they are now ~possible~ unregulated. You mention the right things, but it's two separate ones. Sending/receiving currency in 1 hour - this is not impossible with banking technology today. But if you're sending $10000 this to avoid income taxes, fees or any other kind of regulation – then it's a different thing you're talking about. You are still relying upon a 3rd party to run the ATM or the exchange – and the main differentiator here is – they are not regulated by KYC (Know Your Customer). This means, they are not yet obliged to check who you are, whether you are reporting this $1000 as your income, or the person sending it as service fee, whatever. It's basically black money. In your case – you might have as well transferred $1000 as ransom for releasing your family (god forbid). The point at which you exchange BTC for your local government cash – can be enforced by the government at any time by mandating KYC. And then things will equalize. Or we can assume there will be no such point, and all the last mile purchases will also be BTC. This means no government cash at all, shops accept BTC directly, and since BTC wallets are encrypted – they can simply report whatever they want as income or expense. But at some point, they have to pay their suppliers. And then we can also assume this extends to the suppiers, and all the way up to the supply chain. No reporting anywhere. If the entire money circulation becomes black money (unreported, untaxed), then there is basically no way for any government to function at all. Then the state actor has every incentive to simply shutdown power and take majority control over the ledger (remember: the state has impossibly more compute than anyone else). TL;DR: Lack of regulation is not a feature. It's just a temporary state. We can enjoy it while it lasts.
• nikolay 6y ago
  What was the cost though? I send money to unbanked instantly with no fees.