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I was able to send funds from US directly to a bank account of my friend in Ukraine near instantly for low single digit percent and I could do the same using we
by vladgur 4y ago
I was able to send funds from US directly to a bank account of my friend in Ukraine near instantly for low single digit percent and I could do the same using western union(to my surprise).
All without a fear that my currency will drop 10-20% in a day.
Now about decentralization, I believe that most people hold their transactional crypto funds in a handful of exchanges and thus the dream of decentralized crypto transactions is rarely realized.
But most importantly why does the end user care if the transaction was decentralized or went through a series of transactions through one or more centralized intermediaries.
All people care is have funds that left place A showed up in place B
- 88840-8855 4y agoWow, what a use-case.. sending money from the main NATO member to a country that the NATO supports and wants to win the war. Now do the same thing with sending money to Russia. I just checked WISE. "We temporarily stopped sending money to Russia". Yeah.. thanks..
- faeriechangling 4y agoOkay, so how much has the Ukraine situation actually resulted in crypto transactions? Enough to justify multi trillion valuations?
- nostrademons 4y agoNote that Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Amazon all have $1T+ market caps, and before the recent market meltdown had multi-trillion valuations. Most Americans - particularly those who grew up before globalization - underestimate the scale of global markets. The U.S. is about 4% of the world's population and about 15% of global GDP. Anything that's Internet-based and has truly global appeal will be significantly larger than anything we would've been familiar with pre-globalization. Hell, the product I work on has about 3B users, 10x the population of the United States.
- faeriechangling 4y agoSo we should ignore that crypto is being used a fraction of the time as much as financial products that are worth several times less, because global markets are large? Should every product have a 1 trillion plus valuation because global markets are large? I just never actually see evidence that crypto has taken over global finance or is well on its way to doing so.
- nostrademons 4y agoThe point is that it's not being used a fraction of the time, because you take small fraction of total humans on earth (7B+) and it's a larger number than a large fraction of total humans in the US (320M). There are 100M crypto users in India, for example - that's only about 7%, but 7% of 1.5B is a larger number than 11.8% (market share of JP Morgan Chase, the largest U.S. bank) of 320M. Worldwide, crypto users are about 3% of the total population of most countries - but the U.S. as a whole is only 4% of the global population, so 3% of a global market is the same size as 75% of the U.S. market.
- dmitriid 4y agoI have a wallet and bought crypto once. Am I a user? By your statistics, yes. Do I even matter? No. The only thing I used this crypto for is to sell it later (and gain something like 15 euro profit). Am I a user? By your statistics, still yes. Do I even matter? Still no. Additionally this use case (trade crypto hoping for gains in actual fiat money) is the absolute vast majority of what crypto is used for. Is this replacing traditional finance? Ahahahaha, no. AliPay has a bigger impact on "traditional finance" than all of crypto now or ever.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- whimsicalism 4y agoOutside of your rhetoric, I do think this is a fair point - with bank transfer ultimately you are constrained by the political people in who you can transfer to.
- Jamie9912 4y agoSingle digit percent is unacceptable to me. Also, how long did that take? I assume your friend needs a bank account too..
- web4 4y agothe majority of crypto is being held in non custodial wallets, not exchanges. a better way to frame your comment: why does the world use Stripe and PayPal when you can just go to your bank and ask them to setup a multi day long wire process from bank A to B for less fees?
- thehappypm 4y agoPeople do both, every day, what is your point?
- web4 4y agothe point is that Stripe achieves some features for certain users that a wire does not. and crypto achieves some features for certain users that Stripe does not.
- KennyBlanken 4y agoThe 'wire process' is not "multi-day-long", plus a huge number of banks now participate in Zelle, which can be used for instantaneous fund transfers with zero fees. The biggest problem with Zelle is that it looks and feels like a circa-2002 web application.
- web4 4y agomany wires will be multi days long, encumbered by weekends, holidays, business hours, international checks, and occasional bounces (ask any company their experience with wires for international contractors). Zelle is between US banks only. some people live outside of the US, surprisingly.
- dmitriid 4y agoThe EU has now mandated fast transfers between banks in the EU. So, for EU (23 countries) it's not a problem either. Sending money between banks is both a technical and a regulatory issue (and crypto is discovering why regulations exist at great cost to crypto users). However, "instant money transfer between banks" is not an unsolved issue.
- dropnerd 4y ago2-4% seems like a bad deal compared to sending usdc, which should be around closer to 0.1-1% after the ukraine exchange takes their usdc to local currency exchange fee. minimal volatility, less fees.
- Jommi 4y agoYou can do this w/ crypto but pay only a few cents. I can show it to you if you want.
- sireat 4y agoI am extremely skeptical that it will only cost few cents. (I've sent and received BTC in early 2010s) On ramp and off ramp to fiat will kill you - whether through transaction fees or through slippage. Let's say I am in US with 10k USD cash and I want a family in Ukraine (let's say somewhere safeish like Lviv) to have that 10k USD in hand. Crypto is going to be more expensive than Western Union/Transferwise/SEPA/regular bank transfer/courier through friends. That is the problem with crypto transfers - sure most crypto coins can be transferred cheaply. However that "cheapness" only works as long as you stay in crypto verse.
- Jommi 4y agoI mean there is no way you can get them USD as cash in hand if that's what you mean. Do you mean USD as in a multi-currency bank account like revolut? Onramp via onjuno, convert to USDC, send to your polygon wallet, convert to jEUR on Jarvis, send jEUR to friends wallet, they offramp jEUR with 0 fees to their IBAN bank account in ukraine via mt.Pelerin. You only pay the polygon token transfer fees here. Times have changed since 2010!