4 ms·

Maybe because the fruits of those few well-intentioned founders labours aren't blasted on the news 24/7 like SBF was, doesn't mean they don't exist? I've seen

Maybe because the fruits of those few well-intentioned founders labours aren't blasted on the news 24/7 like SBF was, doesn't mean they don't exist? I've seen people in parts of South America where the banking system can be completely unusable, using their phone to send and receive crypto payments cheaply and reliably, enabling them to safely transact with family. I've heard of this also happening in Africa. Others, workers from Mexico for example, working in the US, are able to remit their small incomes back home for pennies instead of a 15% western union bite out of it. It does have functions and utility that does work, and they are the same functions envisioned by the OG's.

crispyambulance 4y ago
> Others, workers from Mexico for example, working in the US, are able to remit their small incomes back home for pennies instead of a 15% western union bite out of it. ... and ALSO occasionally have the value of explode or implode drastically because it's so volatile and extremely dangerous to use as actual currency. And anyway, where are you getting that western union takes 15%? For fun, just looked up the fee on western union, to transfer $1000 cash from USA to Mexico as cash, is an $8 fee.
- detrites 4y ago
  What is "it"? There are thousands of cryptocurrencies, many pegged to fiat. There's no shortage of price-stable options, but this isn't so relevant for this kind of remittance anyway as typically the crypto will only be held briefly each end. In these situations, someone gets a salary, they immediately send it to a hungry family, who then straightaway pays for essential items with it. Latency is important, sometimes more than cost, as having anything arrive is preferably to being completely without due to a lost transfer. Unfortunately WU fees of 15% or sometimes more are common in poor regions. It's costly because payment corridors in those regions (which is not as simple as country A - country B) are so unreliable - money literally disappears on the way - that the only way it can be done for small value transfers is to hike up the fees to subsidise the losses. You might get a reasonable seeming quote for major centres, but actually go through the process and fill in the details for more out of the way locations and you'll find very different prices. WU and banks all also silently charge another 1-3% on FX rates, this is well-known and uncontroversial - visit wise.com for an accurate overview. (Wise is actually a pretty good traditional-finance-backed solution to these problems for some regions. They did also trial transfers with a crypto back-end for a while, not sure if anything came of it.)
wpietri 4y ago
One, I never said a good side didn't exist. In fact, I was careful to not say that. So easy on the straw men. Two, I have been hearing vague, anecdotal claims like this for years. It reminds me of how back in the day I would get vague, anecdotal claims for why open mail relays were useful to people. But if you want to claim a meaningful fraction of crypto activity is valuable in ways for which there are no equivalent, you'll have to provide data. Three, I'm very skeptical that there aren't other good non-crypto ways to solve the nominal problems. Good or better, really. As an example, take M-Pesa. [1] It started around the same time as Bitcoin, but has done vastly more to bank the unbanked in Africa. If you'd like to demonstrate actual superiority for significant use cases, I'm all ears. But I'm coming up on a decade of dealing with vague, handwavey replies about how crypto is akshually good, so I'm really going to insist on specifics here. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa
- detrites 4y ago
  First page of search results for "remittance" & "crypto" has numerous examples. At random, here's a referenced article covering Africa, South America & Asia: https://thenetworkstate.com/crypto-remittances https://thenetworkstate.com/crypto-remittances I invite you to use the amazing powers we have at our fingertips to find them yourself, and understand why something valued at two pizzas 13 years ago just had its max institutional hold increased from 1% to 2% by the BIS: https://investing.com/news/cryptocurrency-news/bis-allows-banks-to-hold-2-of-their-reserves-in-cryptocurrencies-2966647 https://investing.com/news/cryptocurrency-news/bis-allows-ba...
  - wpietri 4y ago
    Thanks for telling me about this exciting new technology called "search", but it turns out that not only am I aware of it, I have been for quite a while. It is not my job to read random search results in hopes of finding some sort of data that demonstrates the value of crypto. I have already researched this a fair bit and have a provisional conclusion that suits me fine. If you would like your claims about it taken seriously, you can do the searching and collection and analysis and provide me with some results. If that doesn't interest you, that's fine by me.

crispyambulance 4y ago

> Others, workers from Mexico for example, working in the US, are able to remit their small incomes back home for pennies instead of a 15% western union bite out of it. ... and ALSO occasionally have the value of explode or implode drastically because it's so volatile and extremely dangerous to use as actual currency. And anyway, where are you getting that western union takes 15%? For fun, just looked up the fee on western union, to transfer $1000 cash from USA to Mexico as cash, is an $8 fee.

detrites 4y ago
What is "it"? There are thousands of cryptocurrencies, many pegged to fiat. There's no shortage of price-stable options, but this isn't so relevant for this kind of remittance anyway as typically the crypto will only be held briefly each end. In these situations, someone gets a salary, they immediately send it to a hungry family, who then straightaway pays for essential items with it. Latency is important, sometimes more than cost, as having anything arrive is preferably to being completely without due to a lost transfer. Unfortunately WU fees of 15% or sometimes more are common in poor regions. It's costly because payment corridors in those regions (which is not as simple as country A - country B) are so unreliable - money literally disappears on the way - that the only way it can be done for small value transfers is to hike up the fees to subsidise the losses. You might get a reasonable seeming quote for major centres, but actually go through the process and fill in the details for more out of the way locations and you'll find very different prices. WU and banks all also silently charge another 1-3% on FX rates, this is well-known and uncontroversial - visit wise.com for an accurate overview. (Wise is actually a pretty good traditional-finance-backed solution to these problems for some regions. They did also trial transfers with a crypto back-end for a while, not sure if anything came of it.)

wpietri 4y ago

One, I never said a good side didn't exist. In fact, I was careful to not say that. So easy on the straw men. Two, I have been hearing vague, anecdotal claims like this for years. It reminds me of how back in the day I would get vague, anecdotal claims for why open mail relays were useful to people. But if you want to claim a meaningful fraction of crypto activity is valuable in ways for which there are no equivalent, you'll have to provide data. Three, I'm very skeptical that there aren't other good non-crypto ways to solve the nominal problems. Good or better, really. As an example, take M-Pesa. [1] It started around the same time as Bitcoin, but has done vastly more to bank the unbanked in Africa. If you'd like to demonstrate actual superiority for significant use cases, I'm all ears. But I'm coming up on a decade of dealing with vague, handwavey replies about how crypto is akshually good, so I'm really going to insist on specifics here. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa

detrites 4y ago
First page of search results for "remittance" & "crypto" has numerous examples. At random, here's a referenced article covering Africa, South America & Asia: https://thenetworkstate.com/crypto-remittances https://thenetworkstate.com/crypto-remittances I invite you to use the amazing powers we have at our fingertips to find them yourself, and understand why something valued at two pizzas 13 years ago just had its max institutional hold increased from 1% to 2% by the BIS: https://investing.com/news/cryptocurrency-news/bis-allows-banks-to-hold-2-of-their-reserves-in-cryptocurrencies-2966647 https://investing.com/news/cryptocurrency-news/bis-allows-ba...
- wpietri 4y ago
  Thanks for telling me about this exciting new technology called "search", but it turns out that not only am I aware of it, I have been for quite a while. It is not my job to read random search results in hopes of finding some sort of data that demonstrates the value of crypto. I have already researched this a fair bit and have a provisional conclusion that suits me fine. If you would like your claims about it taken seriously, you can do the searching and collection and analysis and provide me with some results. If that doesn't interest you, that's fine by me.