[mrb]

Nope. The closest Western Union/MoneyGram/similar services to me were hours away by car. Hence why we tried to do it online. We tried MoneyGram because my friend was banned from Western Union. But even MoneyGram wasn't possible quickly online.

[im_down_w_otp]

The TAM on homeless friends who need fast cash internationally on Sundays is probably huge.

[mrb]

Nice little bubble you live in. 18% of US population is unbanked or underbanked.

[im_down_w_otp]

I’m straining to see the relevance of that, especially since at one point in my life I was a member of that statistic.

One thing I definitely didn’t need any more of back then was glamorized systems of financial predation and exploitation targeting me because of it. There’s no version of the world where the cryptocurrency ecosystem as it actually is, rather than how it is idealized to be, would have made my plight better had it existed at the time.

In any case, it still seems like a non-sequitur.

I’m just laughing at the premise that the many, many, many billion dollar investments and valuations of cryptocurrency firms, and the unending deluge of fraud and scams they reliably leave in their wake is meaningfully offset by the total amount of money transacted in the niche of homeless friends who need fast cash from their wealthy friend who is half way around the world outside of normal business hours. I mean, if that’s the case, then it would really behoove Western Union and MoneyGram to keep a few locations open on the weekend.

[notahacker]

pretty sure the only time I ever used Moneygram I managed to send funds from my UK bank account without any MoneyGram account. Was a really easy way to get cash in a city that definitely didn't have Bitcoin ATMs