[sporkmonger]

Completely agree that my post is ignoring those things. The post is an extremely forward looking one. Bitcoin could crash and burn before anyone gets a chance to implement something like this. It could be replaced by a second generation cryptocurrency that doesn't have a public ledger. There's a lot of scenarios here where nobody ever gets to do what I was talking about.

I opted to focus entirely on the costs of transmitting the money. If we did a full analysis, we'd also have to look at chargebacks, figure out how to set a value on the speed of the transaction, and deal with the fact that sometimes Western Union just 'loses' your money and isn't sure where it is. Not all of these costs would be paid by the same person, but they do all add up to a systemic cost.

But that's not actually the primary point. There's plenty of reason to believe (besides transaction cost) that cryptocurrency and smart contracts have a long future ahead of them. I'm simply trying to point out that there are business models here that aren't yet being explored.