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All you need is the Hawala network: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala
by noinsight 12y ago
All you need is the Hawala network: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala
- gcb0 12y agomoney transfer based on honor? thats even more fragile than bitcoin
- cubancigar11 12y agoHonor is what honorable people call it. Others call it gang.
- TeMPOraL 12y agoI don't think it deserves downvotes, OP is right. Honor can function both in a group of honest citizens and in a group of obdurate criminals. It's a game-theoretic trick raised to the level of virtue and it's independent of group morality.
- cubancigar11 12y agoThanks for saying that. I guess I should have explained further. Hawala is originally from middle-east and has distinct Islamic flavor to it. So I can understand why someone can find my comment offensive. Hawala has a history of being used in nefarious activities in India so I know better. Black-marketing gold, traceless transfer of money for terrorist activities etc. Gangs have spawned over it and gangs have survived over it. Since it is also used for sending remittance from Saudi to South-Asia by labor/slaves who have their password taken away from them, it is still tolerated socially though not legally.
- cubancigar11 12y ago*passport not password!
- jeangenie 12y agoActually it's used quite successfully in many parts of the world [1]. [1] http://www.johnfwilson.net/resources/Hawala+Occasional+Paper+_3.24.03_.pdf http://www.johnfwilson.net/resources/Hawala+Occasional+Paper...
- kordless 12y agoActually, Ripple sorta works this way.
- chiph 12y agoIt's how it worked in the 16th century when the Italian merchants began issuing Bills of Exchange which meant you no longer had to transport large chests of coins across dangerous territory. The Dutch later picked up on the idea and ran with it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_history_of_the_Dutch_Republic#The_Wisselbanken http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_history_of_the_Dutch_...
- anu_gupta 12y agoTransferwise (http://transferwise.com http://transferwise.com) is sort of based on this - it matches up parties to massively reduce the cost of transferring money. I've used it a couple of times, and it worked very well, and saved me a significant amount of money.