Using [1] an average transaction costs about 10$, this is particularly bad in a poor country. I wonder if using a cryptocurrency is really the best option in this case.
They can have offshore bank accounts but getting the physical cash into and out of the country is tied up in mountains of bureaucracy and corruption. I met a guy in Panama who had to spend half his money getting the other half out of Venezuela. With Bitcoin it is actually possible to save and transfer Bitcoin to cash as needed. Carrying suitcases of hundred dollar bills around is not practical and getting cash in and out of a country like that is almost impossible.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/7b7jj1/john_newber...
See Their's Law, good money drives out bad.[0] People will hodl Bitcoin and spend fiat, driving up the price of BTC in terms of fiat until it absorbs some significant portion of global currency value. There are only 21 M coins; a deflationary crypto currency isn't for buying coffee or micro-payments.
It is displaying similar qualities to Gold in countries where governments have debased the currency.
[0] http://nakamotoinstitute.org/mempool/speculative-attack/
Were Beanie Babies good money driving out bad? https://qz.com/114753/meet-the-family-who-lost-100000-when-t...
Well, there are some broad metrics we can think about. If Bitcoin become a sort of reserve currency, or a digital gold, or a combination of both, shouldn't its total market value be a proportion of what currently occupies that title?
So, do the math. X% of Gold, or X% of reserve currency. Inject that value into 21 million Bitcoin (or the circulating supply at a given moment).
Here's a valuation prediction applying Bitcoin daily trade volume of 10% of foreign exchanges which are $5 Trillion[0]. This would price BTC at $100,000.
Only after it approaches somewhere close to these numbers, would you expect to see appreciation in the range of fiat inflation.
That's how it can be.
[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/31/bitcoin-price-forecast-hit-1...
I don't think you comprehend the workings of "mass terror". Here's how it goes: we'll make you watch while we beat up your wife and kids until you tell us something worth knowing.
No evidence necessary. Pretty much everybody has some valuables, or knows someone who does, and if not who cares? It's your funeral.
Once again, the nerdy preconception that thugs somehow operate on a legalistic or technical basis is just completely wrong. You'll be the one "giving" the valuables to them, to make it stop.
It also shows 30 satoshi a byte gets you transaction accepted in 3-80 blocks, which based on experience is usually 3-12 blocks - and that works out to be 50c for the average transaction
3-12 blocks is half a hour to two hours wait. The chart shows 30 satoshis/byte to take 40 minutes to a 19 hours total wait.
(Given the insane hash power now maybe that standard can be lowered, but on the other hand it's not common to get a spot in the next block anymore.)
So point of sale was never a good fit for Bitcoin. What most real world merchants do when the amount is small enough is to eat the risk. Even if it's easy to double spend in practice most customers won't bother for a can of coke.
In Zimbabwe, you could lose a significant percentage of your cash's value if you delay a purchase. Taking a risk that the other side of the transaction might not be as big of a problem if you can look at their account balance before the transaction begins.
Sure, you risk getting caught in a double-spend that is rejected from the blockchain, but if the alternative is to hold onto cash or to lose out on a transaction in a tough economy, you might be willing to take on that risk.
Merchant picks a solution based on who they integrate with - something like BitGo Instant[0], GreenAddress[1] or an analytics/fraud API provider that adds a risk score to a tx no different to a credit card transaction
That two-hour figure is the amount to get the transaction to the point of irreversibility so it can be re-spent without worry. The equivalent figure for credit cards is ~45 days and checks can take a week to clear.
But you're right, making transactions on chain is not going to be practical in an untrusted environment and it still depends on intermediaries.
Still, that argument was made against RBF and was enough of a hindrade to consensus that RBF was made opt-in. And it still is. So you are absolutely free to accept zero conf transactions, and take the risk, as long as you don't accept those who flag for RBF. Most wallets won't even make them by default (which in my opinion is stupid with the fees we have today).
The argument for a golden age before RBF isn't a good one. It was never reliable. And what little reliability it had is unchanged.
At the current BTC/USD rates, I have a few dollars worth of dust. However, it's spread over 17 inputs, so it's basically unspendable. It would require ~3.1KB transaction so even at 30sat/byte the fees would be, like, 0.00093 BTC ($6.5 at $7K/BTC).
For poorer countries even $2-5 could be a well significant amount. One can probably have a meal for that money.
Or ten... You're a little out of touch for whom you speak for.
Theres nothing wrong with having many utxo's of varying sizes - good wallets will give you a choice on how to select them when composing a transaction (such as Electrum) and you can sweep part of it back to yourself in what would otherwise look like any other transaction