6 ms·

How would you send someone in China (or Nigeria, Peru, ...) money? If they had an ethereum address and you already had a wallet yourself, it's crazy easy. Sett

How would you send someone in China (or Nigeria, Peru, ...) money? If they had an ethereum address and you already had a wallet yourself, it's crazy easy. Setting up and funding a wallet is currently a little tricky, but not as hard as some like to make it seem.

cool_dude85 5y ago
You've described how to send someone in China, Nigeria, or Peru etheriums, but not how to send them money. It turns out when there are capital controls, taxes, laws against crypto, etc., the two are not quite the same.
Ekaros 5y ago
Three steps, first you buying intermediate currency, then transfering that, and then them selling it for their own. First and second are mostly solved, but is there sufficient for third? And what are the conversion costs or fees in each of these? And what are the market fluctuations?
- mritchie712 5y ago
  Sure, there are issues, but the question remains, how would you send money to someone in China? I'm seriously asking. I don't know a simpler way then crypto.
  - mminer237 5y ago
    I believe Alipay would be the easiest for that.
atq2119 5y ago
Other countries do have banks, and international money transfers are a solved problem. I have personal experience with sending money from Europe to Latin American countries. It generally works just fine. I assume Venezuela and at times Argentina may be exceptions due to their political situation, and yeah, for those cryptocurrency may be useful, as an instance of the general rule that cryptocurrency is mostly useful to route around laws and regulations. In principle, cryptocurrency could act as competition to drive the price of transfers down (which would be awesome), but in practice and at the scale I was looking at, there was no price advantage, and the convenience advantage was clearly with the traditional banking system.
- mritchie712 5y ago
  Yes, I know other countries have banks. How would you do it though? What are the steps and services involved? With Ethereum it's (again, assuming you have an address, which is trivial): 1. Get their address (a single universal unique value, no "what's your routing #") 2. Send the Eth to that address
  - shafyy 5y ago
    3. They go and buy bread with their ETH. ... Oh, wait?!
    - KomradeKeeks 5y ago
      TIL HN doesn't know what stablecoins are. Stablecoins are basically on-chain gift cards, with each token priced at about a dollar. Some (USDC, PAX, etc) have businesses you can directly redeem the stablecoins in order to get $1 sent to a bank account, and others (DAI, FRAX, UST) have more complex mechanisms to stay at or ~$1. If you're using a chain that isn't BTC (technically you can use USDT on Omni but almost no one uses it for this), you can probably send the person a stablecoin that is priced at $1 USD. And yes, people in Nigeria and other EMs do this every day, either for remittances, FX trading, or other reasons (reasons can be legal or illegal, i'm not supporting harm or illegal use cases but at some point we gotta recognize the 'freest' countries either still support race-based class discrimination or legalized slavery, so it's insufficient for the purposes of good faith discourse to throw pseudo mic drop rebuttals that assert legal institutions are infallible). EDIT: and to pre-empt the "what if the stablecoin goes up to $2 or down to $0.50???" questions: - Centralized stablecoins like USDC, PAX, etc have licensed businesses that use actual banks to store the reserves, so if anyone wants to sell me their USDC for $0.75, please do and jog on - Decentralized stablecoins like DAI have more complex checks nad balances, and with those, unless you're a market maker or doing something that requires a non-top 3 decentralized stablecoin, it's often better to go with the ones that have been audited and/or battle tested, provided it suits your use case.
      - atq2119 5y ago

cool_dude85 5y ago

You've described how to send someone in China, Nigeria, or Peru etheriums, but not how to send them money. It turns out when there are capital controls, taxes, laws against crypto, etc., the two are not quite the same.

Ekaros 5y ago

Three steps, first you buying intermediate currency, then transfering that, and then them selling it for their own. First and second are mostly solved, but is there sufficient for third? And what are the conversion costs or fees in each of these? And what are the market fluctuations?

mritchie712 5y ago
Sure, there are issues, but the question remains, how would you send money to someone in China? I'm seriously asking. I don't know a simpler way then crypto.
- mminer237 5y ago
  I believe Alipay would be the easiest for that.

atq2119 5y ago

Other countries do have banks, and international money transfers are a solved problem. I have personal experience with sending money from Europe to Latin American countries. It generally works just fine. I assume Venezuela and at times Argentina may be exceptions due to their political situation, and yeah, for those cryptocurrency may be useful, as an instance of the general rule that cryptocurrency is mostly useful to route around laws and regulations. In principle, cryptocurrency could act as competition to drive the price of transfers down (which would be awesome), but in practice and at the scale I was looking at, there was no price advantage, and the convenience advantage was clearly with the traditional banking system.

mritchie712 5y ago
Yes, I know other countries have banks. How would you do it though? What are the steps and services involved? With Ethereum it's (again, assuming you have an address, which is trivial): 1. Get their address (a single universal unique value, no "what's your routing #") 2. Send the Eth to that address
- shafyy 5y ago
  3. They go and buy bread with their ETH. ... Oh, wait?!
  - KomradeKeeks 5y ago
    TIL HN doesn't know what stablecoins are. Stablecoins are basically on-chain gift cards, with each token priced at about a dollar. Some (USDC, PAX, etc) have businesses you can directly redeem the stablecoins in order to get $1 sent to a bank account, and others (DAI, FRAX, UST) have more complex mechanisms to stay at or ~$1. If you're using a chain that isn't BTC (technically you can use USDT on Omni but almost no one uses it for this), you can probably send the person a stablecoin that is priced at $1 USD. And yes, people in Nigeria and other EMs do this every day, either for remittances, FX trading, or other reasons (reasons can be legal or illegal, i'm not supporting harm or illegal use cases but at some point we gotta recognize the 'freest' countries either still support race-based class discrimination or legalized slavery, so it's insufficient for the purposes of good faith discourse to throw pseudo mic drop rebuttals that assert legal institutions are infallible). EDIT: and to pre-empt the "what if the stablecoin goes up to $2 or down to $0.50???" questions: - Centralized stablecoins like USDC, PAX, etc have licensed businesses that use actual banks to store the reserves, so if anyone wants to sell me their USDC for $0.75, please do and jog on - Decentralized stablecoins like DAI have more complex checks nad balances, and with those, unless you're a market maker or doing something that requires a non-top 3 decentralized stablecoin, it's often better to go with the ones that have been audited and/or battle tested, provided it suits your use case.
    - atq2119 5y ago