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Western Union May Offer Digital Currency Services Similar to Bitcoin

• VMG 14y ago
  It is unclear if this is an April's Fools joke. It's not far-fetched enough to be funny.
  • metaverse 14y ago
    It's not. I emailed the author and she confirmed it's real.
    • jpdoctor 14y ago
      To which I think the only response to Western Union can be: Whoosh.
      • deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
      • kzrdude 14y ago
        Why?
        • thawt 14y ago
          Perhaps he meant sploosh: http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lls5fsESx61qi7deco1_250.gif http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lls5fsESx61qi7deco1_250.gi... Edit: Lol.. not sure why I was downvoted. It is obvious the previous poster meant that bitcoin is over-the-heads of employees of Western Union... this was a play on that. HN is a hideous bitch goddess.
          • ahlatimer 14y ago
            It's also the type of discourse many of us would prefer to keep off of this site. Keep it to reddit, please.
            • thawt 14y ago
              So. Confused. I agree that "if you have to explain a joke, it isn't funny", but not only was I on-topic for the story -- but also for the specific thread. The implied point was that the good people at Western Union aren't as dumb as the previous commenter stated, and probably are excited about a (possible) reinvention and embracing of bitcoin. Forgive me for injecting some levity into an otherwise boring story, but my point was clear and remains valid. I suppose I should have just called the previous poster a troll and stated "they're probably excited". Oops. I'll be more confrontational next time. (Also, not on reddit, just would rather attempt to use humor to get a point across. Maybe I watched too much Monty Python as a kid...)
              • ahlatimer 14y ago
                It's not that your point was off-topic or that humor doesn't necessarily belong on HN, but the brand of humor Archer employs is not appropriate for HN, nor is the use of gifs to illustrate your point.
              • ahlatimer 14y ago
                It's not that your point was off-topic or that humor doesn't necessarily belong on HN, but the brand of humor Archer employs is not appropriate for HN, nor is the use of gifs to illustrate your point.
        • javert 14y ago
          Because it's sort of like an old-time telegraph company saying, "Telephones? Hey, let's get in on this by offering a service where we transcribe telephone conversations and send them out to the other party as a telegraph." In other words, totally missing the point.
          • betterunix 14y ago
            Do you actually think there is no need for money services with Bitcoin? I think you need to stop for a moment and think about this: what would Bitcoin be worth if there were no Bitcoin exchanges? Western Union can provide a lot of relevant services: escrow, conversion to obscure currencies (or just general exchange), fraud mitigation, etc.
            • olefoo 14y ago
              > fraud mitigation Ah yes. The fraudsters favorite service for irreversible cash transfers will certainly have an advantage there.
              • veidr 14y ago
                Ok fine, fraud facilitation then. Also a lucrative segment.
            • javert 14y ago
              I'm not trying to diss Western Union here, I'm just explaining why the other guy said that. But OK, I'll take the bait :). Yes, Western Union can provide a lot of relevant services, but so can _anybody_, and there are already a number of Bitcoin exchanges. To assume that Western Union ought to provide Bitcoin services is like assuming that a horse-and-buggy company ought to start making cars. I mean, sure, it might be a really good idea, but cars are a _revolution_ of the horse-and-buggy, not an _evolution_. Likewise, Bitcoin is a revolution compared to traditional money transfer, not an evolution.
          • kzrdude 14y ago
            I don't agree. WU has offices all over the world, which can be of a great service to customers, with USD or bitcoin.
• acd 14y ago
  Hopefully hackers can bring us sound money again. Sound money as in money not debt money created out of thin air. The FED is privately owned by the big banks, see "The creature from Jekyll Island". The senator Aldrichs daughter who was on the island was married to one of the bankers. The by bank created new debt money out of thin air blows up assets bubbles that the central bankers later ride in and try and save, by saving the debt bubbles losses are socialized ie its burden is put to the people through inflation instead of the bank owners/bond holders taking the losses. Central banks centrally plan the price of new money by controlling the interest rate. It would be good if more viewed the documentary film "The four horsemen".
  • TDL 14y ago
    If the FED is private why does turn it's profits over to the US Treasury every year? Why is the Chairman & members of the Board of Governors nominated by the President & confirmed by the U.S. Senate. I don't like the Federal Reserve either, but ignorance & conspiracy theories of the way the system actually works does no one any good. "The members of the Board of Governors are nominated by the President of the United States and confirmed by the U.S. Senate." http://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/about_12591.htm http://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/about_12591.htm
• edgesrazor 14y ago
  With the coverage the Bitcoin exchange rate has been getting, this was just a matter of time.
  • joezydeco 14y ago
    I see WU looking at things like Bitcoin more to minimize transmission time and interbank exchange fees on the foreign exchange market. WU can then control the float time and the margins on exchange rates.
    • JumpCrisscross 14y ago
      I do not believe so - interbank transfers are nearly instantaneous and cheap, especially for a firm like Western Union. The meatier costs are from anti-fraud and anti-money laundering.
      • legutierr 14y ago
        Actually, the majority of their costs come from direct agent fees and commissions. These fee costs are lower for transactions that originate online, but most don't; of transactions that do originate online, most are terminated by agents that pay out in cash, and are compensated for that. Compliance costs are huge, but they are a fraction of agent fees. It might be said, however, that a good percentage of those fees are to compensate the agent for their compliance activities; a lot of the Western Union's customer contact is handled by the agents, including compliance events. All of that being said, Bitcoin eliminates or at least reduces many of those costs, in that delivery and receipt of payment can proceed without the involvement of the agent. And FinCEN, with its determination that institutional bitcoin services must be handled by a money transmitter, has just created a barrer to entry that WU is well inside of. I concur with you, however, that interbank fees are a minimal component of their cost. Also, transfers processed by WU and its competitors are usually instantaneous from the point of view of their customers (part of the value they bring is the massive network of paying and receiving terminals that exist worldwide). Source: I was the head of IT and operations for a money transmitter in a previous life.
  • 14y ago
• gesman 14y ago
  Buying bitcoins is a convoluted process especially outside of USA. Western union certainly has infrastructure to speed-up this process for anyone who is willing to pay their outrageous fees.
  • rhokstar 14y ago
    And to your point, this could be their new competitive advantage.
• BrokenPipe 14y ago
  If bitcoin is going to be here in 2 years then I think it's undervalued. In some exchange it has reached past $111
  • ryusage 14y ago
    Where about do you think it ought to be valued? Personally, as a completely casual observer, the current valuation seems incredibly high and unsustainable, but I'll admit that's an uninformed gut reaction.
    • JonnieCache 14y ago
      Due to the limit on the amount of bitcoins that can ever exist, for them to move a really large amount of wealth around the world they will have to be heavily subdivided, making each whole bitcoin necessarily worth a lot more than $100. Do the maths, it rapidly becomes obvious.
    • mtgx 14y ago
      Depends what you mean. Are you saying it's overvalued because the current economy of Bitcoin is not strong enough to make it worth $100, or are you saying a Bitcoin ever being worth $100 is already too much? Because Bitcoin has the potential to be worth millions of dollars/unit: http://falkvinge.net/2013/03/06/the-target-value-for-bitcoin-is-not-some-50-or-100-it-is-100000-to-1000000/ http://falkvinge.net/2013/03/06/the-target-value-for-bitcoin... Whether that will ever happen, or if it will happen in the next few decades, it remains to be seen. But the point is a Bitcoin does have the potential to be worth a lot per unit. It all depends on how many people and businesses are going to use it in the future. If you look at it like that, Bitcoin hasn't even scratched the surface of its potential.
    • kgo 14y ago
      Current Market Cap is at $1 billion. Let's say all bitcoin becomes is a paypal killer. Paypal had a total payment volume of $145 billion in 2012. Now you can't just say a fair value for bitcoin's market cap is $145 billion because that doesn't take money velocity into account. Some of that volume could be the same dollars floating around. You don't need $145 billion in cash all at once to cover that activity. But paypal's revenue was $5.6 billion. So the amount bitcoin needs to be worth to handle the same amount of business as paypal is somewhere between those two numbers, and even a low $10 billion prices bitcoins at $1000 each. Visa Inc had a total payment volume of $6.4 Trillion in 2012. Of course in addition to figuring out the actual money velocity you need to remove the credit component since bitcoin doesn't do that. But some sketchy back-of-the-envelope math can demonstrate that a $100 billion dollar market wouldn't be unheard of, with $10,000 bitcoins. Of course I'm talking like 10-20 years out for anything like that, not today.
• swang 14y ago
  Where is the appeal in a WU created digital currency? 1. This will probably mean WU wants a cut of all transactions in any digital currency they create... for life. 2. No benefit over fiat currency? 3. Not anonymous. 4. All the "coins" are controlled by WU.
  • olefoo 14y ago
    Perhaps they are counting on their 'brand equity' to serve as a competitive advantage? I'm similarly dubious as to their chances of success with the initial population ( the part of the market for digital currencies that overlaps with bitcoin traders ), however they do have a global retail presence and a brand that is recognizable even if it's trustworthiness is suspect.
  • notahacker 14y ago
    A WU created digital currency would be convertible to cash, on demand, at one's family's local Western Union agent in their remote village in Africa, so they can buy food and petrol with it when they need it. Much of this target market would never have had any access to any form of online payment service before. And all the coins being "controlled" by a regulated, profitable multinational business with a lot to lose from scamming people (and probably tied to the dollar) is a lot more reassuring than a software protocol administered by a mysterious foreign foundation - transaction fees or no transaction fees. Not every product has to be an appealing proposition to US-based early adopters to be phenomenally useful.
• th0ma5 14y ago
  What is stopping someone from looking at Bitcoin, changing something simple, and competing immediately?
  • drcode 14y ago
    You might be interested in namecoin or litecoin. Unfortunately, those aren't worth much, because of the network effects driving bitcoin.
  • SilasX 14y ago
    Nothing but getting people to use the competing currency. There are already numerous competitors trying to get momentum.
  • aianus 14y ago
    The same thing that's preventing someone from looking at Facebook, changing something simple, and competing immediately: nothing but network effects.
• PaulAJ 14y ago
  As in, how can we respond to this competitive threat that undercuts our business model while still maintaining our current revenues?
• deleted 14y ago
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