So high tech crypto is the solution to making trading with the developing world easier? Aren’t these the same sorts of places which struggle to have reliable electricity, let alone internet access?
Even in developed countries a non-trivial proportion of the population is not banked. (Estimate for Canada: 6% of adults do not have any form of bank account.) It can be the large majority in many developing countries, including ones where most people have electricity at home and a smartphone can be bought for a few day's wages. Sending a small amount of cash from Brazil to Canada is not trivial in many cases.
And of course, many people here on Hacker News have a rather privileged Western notion, that you can, in fact, legally send money just wherever. That's not universal. Capital controls restrict that heavily in many places, such that it can be illegal for people to send money out of the country. So the formal banking system is no help there.
Assuming that you can trade Bitcoin on both ends, it really is often the simplest way to simply move money between people outside the formal banking system, especially internationally. For better and worse, it cuts right through all of the red tape: no wire transfer declarations, no capital control declarations, no government-mandated exchange rates, no tax reporting, no KYC requirements, no ID requirements.
> such that it can be illegal for people to send money out of the country
so it would be illegal to send crypto money
if we are exploring illegal ways to do things, crypto is just one of many solutions and probably not the cheapest or easiest
> Assuming that you can trade Bitcoin on both ends, it really is often the simplest way to simply move money between people outside the formal banking system
Talking about Africa, as an Italian with African roots, it's not.
the idea that you need cutting edge technology to solve developing countries problems is a die hard one and represent a "rather privileged Western notion", developing countries have their own systems that already work.
When there is a mobile network, people are able to send money even without an internet connection using mobile phones of 4 generations ago. In Africa it is possible since middle 2000s.
In many African countries, where China is financing developing projects, you can use WeChat.
Anyway, you can already send money to Burundi, Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe (and many others https://www.xoom.com/about) using Xoom
Yes, Iran or Venezuela or North Korea are not there, because that would be illegal for an US business, but it's illegal to send crypto as well. The hard part of sending money to such countries is not technical, it's legal, I understand if people want to send money back to their families, but it's an hard task by design when people living in those countries aren't even allowed to leave the country or own a bank account in a foreign country (because of the US)
I think you're really taking for granted that a trustless system means I don't need to consult some greedy central power to ask them permission to send funds to my family in a restricted country.
If your family was barely surviving in a restricted country I'm sure you would send funds to them as well. I don't derive ethics from existing power structures and I certainly sleep better at night helping people regardless of regulations.
You're free to have your own ethics and disagree with me - that's the beauty of trustless systems, you can make your own decisions as can I.
> If your family was barely surviving in a restricted country I'm sure you would send funds to them as well.
I don't really understand why people don't read other people comments
I've literally said "as an Italian with roots in Africa" my African family was dirty poor and my Italian family isn't reach either.
I guess you are not from a poor country, so why are you imposing your rich country world view on me?
trustless systems are THE problem in a "restricted country" you'd know if you'd ever visited one.
They can and will take waway from you everything at will, imagine what would happen to a family that suddenly has money to spend but nobody can say where the money is coming from...
if there's no proof that the money is yours, you can't claim the ownership, taking it away from you it's easier.
"but... but... there's an entry in a global immutable ledger that says that the money was transfered from this anonymous wallet to my anonymous wallet and..."
"so you have no document proving that the money is yours! they are legally of the government now. we're also taking the keys of the wallet."
living the life of warlords or mobsters or arms dealer, hiding the sources of your income like criminals, is not what people in developing countries want!
they want banks and laws like everybody else
they don't want to try to be rich by investing in a pump and dump speculative asset so that Musk can make more money.
They absolutely want trusted systems, as small as possible, so they can trust them, not the global financial tools of the richest 1% elité
I'm not going to go into my background as if that were some added credibility like you seem to think your background is. A point stands on its own, not based on the authority of the person making the point.
> if there's no proof that the money is yours, you can't claim the ownership, taking it away from you it's easier.
You seem to have little clue how cryptocurrencies even work here. You can't take someones crypto without taking their private key and you won't even be able to know how much crypto exists in someones wallet without the private key.
Now of course someone can put a gun to your head and demand your private key, but they won't have any indication that you even OWN a private key with crypto whereas with fiat they can just raid your house and claim the cash.
In no circumstance is it easier for a central authority to take crypto than cash.
I'm not sure what ledger you think will prevent criminals from taking cash from your house or bank in the same manner. If you think a thug with a gun can't demand your bank login the same as they can demand your private key then you really don't know what you're talking about. I could relay personal experience, but again I don't consider arguments from some notion of anecdotal authority to be valid so I'll let you just google the situation if you'd like where people at gunpoint are made to withdraw cash from ATMs. It's common enough.
Again, there's no situation where crypto is easier to steal than a countries fiat.
> A point stands on its own, not based on the authority of the person making the point.
paraphrasing Asimov
my ignorance is not as good as your knowledge
> You seem to have little clue how cryptocurrencies even work here
doesn't a point stand on its own, not based on the authority of the person making the point?
who said that? ... I can't remember
anyway, I was involved in btc from 2014 to 2016.
dropped it and never looked back.
> Now of course someone can put a gun to your head and demand your private key, but they won't have any indication that you even OWN a private key with crypto whereas with fiat they can just raid your house and claim the cash.
that's why we have banks and don't keep our money under the mattress.
so that the bank is responsible of keeping it safe and I don't lose it if the bank gets robbed.
what happens to my bitcoins if someone robs them?
but let's imagine you are in a poor country, can't open a bank account because the system doesn't accept you, you don't trust it, there is no bank system in your country, whatever...
now imagine you need to buy something that your family needs. you convert your bitcoins to fiat money (someway, that's another cane of worms entirely), because of course you can buy a Tesla with bitcoins, but not primary goods, and you are back at square one: you have cash in your home that is not safe.
> I'm not sure what ledger you think will prevent criminals from taking cash from your house or bank in the same manner
do you seriously don't know?
> people at gunpoint are made to withdraw cash from ATMs. It's common enough.
it's not.
because you can only withdraw a small amount of money from ATM (€ 250 in Italy) so the incentive is close to zero.
thieves steal the ATM machine and try to break it later
it's extremely rare, but it happens.
but even then the incentive is very low, because if you break an ATM machine the money inside is tainted with a special paint that makes it useless and highly recognizable.
> Again, there's no situation where crypto is easier to steal than a countries fiat.
bitcoins are useful only when converted to fiat money.
you can't buy bread for your family with bitcoins in Somalia.
You can't in Italy as well.
infact they steal your fiat money, which is much more valueable for a thief.
anyway you seem to not understand how developing countries work, at all.
money is not stolen from you, it's seized by corrupt governments and corrupt police forces.
crypto doesn't solve that, in any way.
if you can hide crypto, they will seize the goods you buy with them.
Believe it or not. You can just use an app that accept crypto payment that is installed in your smartphone in Africa. So the answer is, yes. I can send crypto to an orphan in Africa without going through intermediary. Fast, quick, trustless.
And of course, many people here on Hacker News have a rather privileged Western notion, that you can, in fact, legally send money just wherever. That's not universal. Capital controls restrict that heavily in many places, such that it can be illegal for people to send money out of the country. So the formal banking system is no help there.
Assuming that you can trade Bitcoin on both ends, it really is often the simplest way to simply move money between people outside the formal banking system, especially internationally. For better and worse, it cuts right through all of the red tape: no wire transfer declarations, no capital control declarations, no government-mandated exchange rates, no tax reporting, no KYC requirements, no ID requirements.