Bitcoin Is a Hit in Countries Where Locals Face Currency Troubles | Hacker News Reader

Bitcoin Is a Hit in Countries Where Locals Face Currency Troubles

wsj.com

32 pointsjkuria19 comments

Makes sense. The actual world economy vastly outstrips the money in circulation.

I dont think bitcoin is sustainable now, and miners have too much interest for make any change, If you pick a Cryptocurrency like raiblock, - Transferts are instant. (5seg) - No fees (you send 10 your friend get 10)

And this is for ever and even if all humans on earth use it, instant and 0 fees..

I dont see the benefits in using btc having micropayments/value storage solved.

The advantage of bitcoin is that it's censorship resistant and descentralised. I don't know of any other knock off cryptocurrency that does fulfill these two aspects.

but then again being decentralized results in being unusable as a payment facility.

Not true. Lightning is being implemented and now you can make small quick payments with very low fees.

Bitcoin is still in the early stages, many 2nd layer solutions are to be implemented.

You need an on chain transaction to create a LN payment channel. And if you only create one payment channel, you are highly dependent on the one peer you connect to, and reveal your entire transaction graph to that peer and the nodes the peer is connected to.

To get decentralized permissionless-ness and privacy, you need many channels. And you need a lot BTC to put in all of these channels, as the LN depends on BTC (or ETH or whatever cryptocurrency you're transferring) equaling the maximum amount you may want to send in any one transaction being locked up in the channel.

With transaction fees exceeding $15, Bitcoin is already unusable for the majority of the world's population, even with the Lightning Network, and even if each user only creates one payment channel.

Bitcoin is still in the early stages

I would say that Bitcoin is entering phase 3 of its lifespan, having just "rounded the bend" of its money creation curve. 75% of the Bitcoin that will ever exist are already in circulation.

Growth of the supply has slowed dramatically. Even if lightning networks can address the issue of transaction fees (and I'm doubtful), that will not solve the deflation issue, where actually obtaining a usable amount of bitcoin will be increasingly difficult. Due to the semi-anonymous nature of wallets, it's impossible to know for sure what the wealth distribution of bitcoin looks like, but estimates I've seen suggest that the disparities look something like North Korea.

There are quite a few, but they operate on the same principles AFAIK.

>The main attraction in bitcoin is the ability to transfer money without any restrictions

yeah just pay 30$ per transaction and wait few days

TBF the current state of Bitcoin is on par with what banks have always been offering for international transfers. So, it still has the use case of sending unrestricted amounts of money to a peer abroad.

However, I agree on the general sentiment. Transactions are more expensive than they should be.

That depends on what the network is for: transactional currency, settlement, something else...?

> with what banks in the US have always been offering

FTFY

And even with the likes of Transferwise, it's cheaper even using "traditional banking"

- I am not american. I used international transfers with french, british, japanese and korean banks, and there always was either a fee of 30~50$, or an awful sub-market exchange rate.

- TransferWise is not universal and does not work for many currencies, including the Chinese Yuan and the Indian Rupee.

TransferWise can send rupees to Indian bank accounts and I am assuming the reason they cannot take money out of India is because of Indian Govt forex regulations.

And there's the next massive bitcoin advantage : you can bypass financial regulations for normal people.

"Somehow" these rich bankers and regulators (mostly ex-bankers of course) do not see the need for poor people to be able to transact either internationally, or in some countries, at all (in anything but cash, and thus very short distance only).

With bitcoin it's 30$, but there's no percentual charge (in fact the exchange rate is often better than market for BOTH participants because bitcoin is rising in value)

> because bitcoin is rising in value

and what happens when it drops in value, the poor guy lost money

Whereas if you use a bank transfer, a 3% drop is the base cost on every single transfer. Bitcoin is volatile, but you'd very rarely have costs that high, and as I stated before, usually the cost would be negative.

Thanks for clarifying (and I agree with the exchange rate complaints)

China and India have strong currency controls in place so your problem might not be solvable by other providers

Have you tried Xe?

Wires cost $25 for me for any amount, and clear within 4 hours.

The crazy thing is that at this point in time, Banks are actually faster and cheaper than Bitcoin.

And I'm risk adverse, I'll trade "decentralization" for "your money is literally guaranteed by the government" any day.

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