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On a very poor population where even a 1% swing in valuation can make a huge difference in someone’s life. There’s also no recourse for fraud here — the industr

On a very poor population where even a 1% swing in valuation can make a huge difference in someone’s life. There’s also no recourse for fraud here — the industry has all kinds of scrupulous players and isn’t as locked down as traditional banking. To me, it seems like El Salvador should have created a MoneyGram competitor and left it at that. They could remove/reduce commission without all the rest of the risks.

toomuchtodo 5y ago
To your point, they could've partnered with TransferWise/Wise.com or OFX to build a white label app that allowed for frictionless remittance and fiat management for their citizens and "wallet management" (ie deposit accounts), and your usual fintech wallet accounts. This would be no different than the UK's Faster Payment's service being a managed service by Vocalink [1]. Some have proposed the US Fed issuing FedAccounts, deposit accounts held at the Fed with no fees, to sidestep inequity and predatory behavior from commercial banks. This would be very similar, except the El Salvador government outsourcing these functions (as they rely primarily on the US dollar as their currency) and the cross border exchange. Onboard citizens using their DUI (Documento Único de Identidad) or Passport number, voilà, they're banked and can store or transfer monetary value. Subsidize physical hardware for those who can't afford a smart phone. Does El Salvador need a blockchain or crypto? No, of course not. They need inexpensive facilitation of domestic financial services and cross border remittance to reduce currency import drag. Instead, inept politicians (for various reasons out of scope for this thread) are going to cause a lot of suffering, but it will be helpful to have a case study to point to in order to demonstrate the nation state policy failure. This is worse than being reliant on another country's monetary policy and central bank. You're tying your economy to a speculative asset with few governance mechanisms. C'est la vie. [1] https://www.vocalink.com/payment-processing/real-time-payments/ https://www.vocalink.com/payment-processing/real-time-paymen...
- Karrot_Kream 5y ago
  They can still do this. It's not like BTC is the only legal tender here. They still continue to use USD as legal tender.

toomuchtodo 5y ago

To your point, they could've partnered with TransferWise/Wise.com or OFX to build a white label app that allowed for frictionless remittance and fiat management for their citizens and "wallet management" (ie deposit accounts), and your usual fintech wallet accounts. This would be no different than the UK's Faster Payment's service being a managed service by Vocalink [1]. Some have proposed the US Fed issuing FedAccounts, deposit accounts held at the Fed with no fees, to sidestep inequity and predatory behavior from commercial banks. This would be very similar, except the El Salvador government outsourcing these functions (as they rely primarily on the US dollar as their currency) and the cross border exchange. Onboard citizens using their DUI (Documento Único de Identidad) or Passport number, voilà, they're banked and can store or transfer monetary value. Subsidize physical hardware for those who can't afford a smart phone. Does El Salvador need a blockchain or crypto? No, of course not. They need inexpensive facilitation of domestic financial services and cross border remittance to reduce currency import drag. Instead, inept politicians (for various reasons out of scope for this thread) are going to cause a lot of suffering, but it will be helpful to have a case study to point to in order to demonstrate the nation state policy failure. This is worse than being reliant on another country's monetary policy and central bank. You're tying your economy to a speculative asset with few governance mechanisms. C'est la vie. [1] https://www.vocalink.com/payment-processing/real-time-payments/ https://www.vocalink.com/payment-processing/real-time-paymen...

Karrot_Kream 5y ago
They can still do this. It's not like BTC is the only legal tender here. They still continue to use USD as legal tender.