[paperpunk]

Can you give more details on this? Why is it that the existing banking system cannot do this kind of foreign remittance? E.g. correspondent banking via Swift?

Is it high fees, is it overly burdensome sanctions/AML checks, something else?

[svetb]

Not OP, but we have contractors in Nigeria, and paying them via regular bank transfer is nearly impossible. For example many banks will outright refuse to make SWIFT transactions to Nigerian accounts.

This is just one example of a few factors that lead to a sort of isolation from international banking.

[0xDEAFBEAD]

>many banks will outright refuse to make SWIFT transactions to Nigerian accounts

The flipside of this is crypto turbocharging online scammers.

"The industry in Cambodia now generates more than $12.5 billion annually – half of the country's GDP, according to the United States Institute for Peace."

"The criminal gangs entice trafficking victims with fake job offers posted on social media and then force them to financially exploit people online including through fake romances or “pig-butchering” schemes in which the scammer builds trust with a victim before stealing their money, Amnesty said."

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/society-equity/amnest...

The scammers will make friends with someone online, persuade them to deposit increasingly large amounts into a "crypto trading platform", then finally run with the money.

Crypto has created an alternative financial system with many fewer rules. This can either be good or bad depending on the circumstances.

I think it has the potential to be a good thing in the long run. In the short run, however, people need to learn to instinctively distrust crypto as a scam. Especially if the situation involves a friendly attractive lady you've been chatting with online who's really good at trading cryptocurrency and wants to share her secrets with you.

[Gigachad]

This is why banks often block you from buying crypto in the first place.

[digital_voodoo]

It's high fees, burdensome sanctions/AML checks (especially if the said country has been recently or is still on a GAFI list), plus the suboptimization of the core banking systems regarding international transfers, that make the whole things happen in weeks (or sometimes never happen if the end beneficiary doesn't start pinging, emailing or phoning its bank every now and then). The whole unreliability/unpredictability of the thing makes it undesirable for regular operations.

[tonyhart7]

because their central bank is sucks, simple