3 ms·

Too early to tell if Stella will work but their intentions appear good and the underlying concept solid. Was very surprised though that there isn't a single adv

by corford 12y ago

Too early to tell if Stella will work but their intentions appear good and the underlying concept solid. Was very surprised though that there isn't a single advisor to the board who's career has been in finance or banking. Seems to me that stella will only work and achieve broad adoption if the network has solid gateways operated by entities people already know and trust. Who do most people trust with their money? Existing banks and other well known exchange/trading platforms (xe.com / etrade / western union). If you want these institutions to start operating stella gateways, surely it would be a good idea to have an advisor to the board that's from that world, well connected and understands it intimately?

corford 12y ago
Not sure why I'm being down voted. My understanding is the system works better (at least for currency X to currency Y transactions) the more trusted local currency gateways exist in the network. So if using stellar on the backend makes it theoretically easier/cheaper/faster for traditional money transfer platforms to transmit/receive funds for their clients and having trusted brands as gateways is good for stellar's adoption; then surely that's a win/win and they should have an insider from the banking/finance/forex world advising their board and helping them get one or two well known finance shops involved in a pilot. Concrete example: I use XE.com trade for making international wires to people (most of the time it's GBP to EUR wires). Using XE is easier and cheaper than using my bank for this but the process is still painful. After locking in an exchange rate for the trade, I then have to wire my funds in GBP to XE.com's GBP bank account (with a reference number for the trade) and they then wire the equivalent EUR amount to the recipient's EUR bank account. I have to provide loads of bank details for the recipient (branch address, IBAN, SWIFT, intermediary bank etc.) and it usually takes 48 hours before the money arrives in their account (sometimes longer if they have a weird bank). It's also often difficult to work out what fees intermediary banks will extract en-route. I'd love it if XE.com had stellar GBP and EUR gateways. I could then dump some funds in their GBP gateway, give them the stellar username I want to send the equivalent EUR amount to and hit send. Instant and easy. Or maybe I've completely misunderstood the purpose of gateways and how they work?

by corford 12y ago

corford 12y ago

Not sure why I'm being down voted. My understanding is the system works better (at least for currency X to currency Y transactions) the more trusted local currency gateways exist in the network. So if using stellar on the backend makes it theoretically easier/cheaper/faster for traditional money transfer platforms to transmit/receive funds for their clients and having trusted brands as gateways is good for stellar's adoption; then surely that's a win/win and they should have an insider from the banking/finance/forex world advising their board and helping them get one or two well known finance shops involved in a pilot. Concrete example: I use XE.com trade for making international wires to people (most of the time it's GBP to EUR wires). Using XE is easier and cheaper than using my bank for this but the process is still painful. After locking in an exchange rate for the trade, I then have to wire my funds in GBP to XE.com's GBP bank account (with a reference number for the trade) and they then wire the equivalent EUR amount to the recipient's EUR bank account. I have to provide loads of bank details for the recipient (branch address, IBAN, SWIFT, intermediary bank etc.) and it usually takes 48 hours before the money arrives in their account (sometimes longer if they have a weird bank). It's also often difficult to work out what fees intermediary banks will extract en-route. I'd love it if XE.com had stellar GBP and EUR gateways. I could then dump some funds in their GBP gateway, give them the stellar username I want to send the equivalent EUR amount to and hit send. Instant and easy. Or maybe I've completely misunderstood the purpose of gateways and how they work?