[oarabbus_]

>I'm saying: you need the blockchain if and only if you are doing things that are illegal in your country. It's a decision criteria for when you need the blockchain.

This is, at face value, simply false.

I want to send $5 to a poor African family. I'll even relax my criteria - I'm willing to wait _up to 3 business days_ for this African family to receive my $5. I live in California.

Could you please point me towards the non-blockchain way to do this?

[roywiggins]

Western Union can send $5 to Ghana. They'll charge you a dollar. I can't speak to the actual speed, but they claim minutes, and the recipient gets to pick up their money in cash from their nearest affiliated agent. WU has a pretty extensive network.

https://www.westernunion.com/us/en/send-money/app/start?SrcC...

If not WU, there's probably some other remittance company operating in their area. The fees might be pretty exorbitant though, especially for small amounts.

[arcticbull]

You want to send five DOLLARS to a poor African family. Here's a few questions.

(1) Since the African nation in question doesn't accept either dollars or bitcoin, you're going to have to convert the currency one way or another. Buying BTC is not cheap, you pay ~1%+ to Coinbase, so that's 5 cents right there. Transaction fees on Bitcoin are $0.36 right now. Then you're going to have to convert it to something they can spend in their local country, and good luck to you. That second transaction is going to cost them another $0.36, and so is any other transaction they may be wanting to spend the BTC in. If they're making purchases of just $1, thats a THIRTY SIX PERCENT transaction fee.

(2) Does this poor African family have a phone, laptop or computer, and access to get to their nearest BTC exchange/ATM? Are there any in your country in question?

(3) WU is $1. Other services exist and are priced competitively. Have you looked into M-PESA?

[the_gastropod]

Transferwise is both faster and cheaper than sending Bitcoin. And it doesn't require your poor African family to sign up for a probably poorly run poor African Bitcoin exchange.

[skilgarriff]

You are assuming they can't pay for services in Bitcoin - which they can. There are a number of things that currently accept Bitcoin, and that number is only growing imo.

[arcticbull]

>> number is only growing IMO

Please cite sources to justify your opinion because every graph I've seen has accepance going down.

[skilgarriff]

I don't have any graphs as like I said it's just my opinion. I'm really only basing it off of 4 things.

1. The general excitement around Lightning Network on Twitter with Jack and tippin.me, as well as this website: https://lightningnetworkstores.com/

2. Coinbase's reported 48,000 merchants/partners reported here: https://www.coinbase.com/clients?locale=en-US

3. I frequent similar places everyday - 2 out of the 3 places that I frequent almost everyday are now accepting btc within the past 3 months - My coffee shop and bar.

4. Musing about Venezuela from crypto podcasts, and articles.

I'll admit I'm biased as I do think it's a good invention, and tend to support Bitcoin. Despite that, I am open minded and would happily check out any information that would propose things are tending in the opposite direction.

[arcticbull]

1. LN won’t serve the worlds needs it will take 35 years to open a channel for everyone on earth and another 35 years to close it again, assuming the population doesn’t grow.

2. Coinbase merchants take out fiat like bitpay merchants because their suppliers take real money, and so does the tax man. Holding crypto exposes them to unbelievable forex risk. If they took bitcoin and held it over the last year how on earth would they pay their tax bills? Taxes are due on the face value of the crypto at acquisition.

3. That’s an anecdote.

4. Venezuela is zero sum unless you can trade bolivars for bitcoin with outsiders in which case that’d be better off with dollars by any measure. If you’re buying locally you’re moving the bags around. Real mining equipnent just gets nationalized. It’s not a solution for Venezuela or any other developing nation because you haven’t solved the initial distribution problem.

[skilgarriff]

1. I have to admit, if you are going to be so vehemently angry against anyone who even talks about Bitcoin as being potentially useful, I'd suggest you do at least 5 minutes of googling. Channel Factories -> https://www.tik.ee.ethz.ch/file/a20a865ce40d40c8f942cf206a7c... Cool stuff, I doubt you'll actually read it, but there's the link anyway.

2. Whoa look at that -> You can pay your taxes in Ohio in Bitcoin. So apparently "how on earth would they pay their tax bills" means send them BTC if they live in Ohio :). Suggesting that because you can't pay taxes or pay suppliers right now with Bitcoin, and therefore it will never be useful or capable of those things is such a silly argument. I certainly don't believe we live in a world where you can buy anything with BTC right now, but like I said my statement was about us trending in that way (Still waiting on all those graphs showing the opposite by the way).

3. Damn, I forgot I can't use anecdotes to influence my opinion. Thanks for reminding me.

4. Don't ask me -> ask the data. https://coin.dance/volume/localbitcoins/VES/BTC "35,000 Bitcoin (worth around $127 million at today's prices) was traded for bolívar on the LocalBitcoins crypto exchange over the entire course of last year." Maybe they would be better off with dollars, but Bitcoin is much easier to transfer across borders, and much easier to hold on your person without signaling that you are carrying thousands of dollars.

I'm happy to talk more about crypto with you, although I'm not sure you are open to actually talk honestly about it - seeing as how you took the time to negatively respond to every post I made on this subject. If there is something that has made you so angry about Bitcoin, I'd be happy to learn it to see if I'm supporting something that I shouldn't.

I'm certainly not arguing that Bitcoin is the perfect solution, nor that it's super helpful or accessible today. But, I don't think absolutely denying any use is a smart strategy, and I'd rather have you make legitimate counter arguments where you've actually spent the time to learn things rather than the lax effort you've put in so far.

[notahacker]

Western Union will do it in minutes, and I've actually used it to send myself money in Africa in lieu of better options when having bankcard issues (turnaround time <1 hour including finding the agent, fee ~5%). Admittedly the transaction fee on a transaction as small as $5 is pretty steep (20%!), but they're getting spendable cash for it, and I doubt the average family in Africa is getting a better deal when asking the local computer expert if he'll give local banknotes in exchange for their satoshis...

[pessimizer]

If you live in a medium sized city, probably within the hour and within walking distance of your house, an African person walked into a store covered in colorful signs advertising phone cards, cheap plane fares and bus tickets, and sent half of their week's paycheck to their family somewhere in Africa.

This is not only not a mystery, but common, and individual remittances from emigrant relatives are a major consideration in the economies of some underdeveloped countries.

[pjc50]

The blockchain way doesn't send them $5, it sends them a token which is surprisingly hard to redeem for $5.

[donarb]

In Kenya, you can use M-PESA. Money is transferred digitally and quickly.