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Comment by emptyfile | Hacker News Reader

A small developing country with little industry, high inequality and some of the worst murder rates in world decides to spend their very limited money and attention on populist nonsense like this.

I guess the gangs will appreciate it?

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About 1/4 of the citizen's wealth comes from US dollar transfers from abroad (ie., from immigrant families). (Their currency is the US dollar.)

Presently very high transaction fees and poor banking-system support eats up a significant amount of this wealth.

Can you see why this isn't "populist none-sense" ?

Transaction fees is one thing, but going to the city by bus to pick up the money is extra cost and hours of time. I sometimes wish people from US would travel to these places to understand the life other people were born into.

I have traveled extensively in developing countries (years) and see this cryptocurrency initiative serving a real need with remittances and electronic payments.

How then does it compare to M-Pesa?

I'm not overly familiar with M-Pesa. That said, a primary distinction is centralized vs decentralized. I prefer to have full control and trust in my currency. Crypto is volatile, but there also isn't a central bank to inflate away its value. From my perspective that is the totality of the value from distributed / decentralized consensus in currencies

So you're saying you "see this cryptocurrency initiative serving a real need with remittances and electronic payments" and also you're not "overly familiar" with the market leader in remittances and electronic payments?

The leader you reference is not dominant in all or even most developing countries. You likely have never even had a need to use an app like this. I can only conclude your comments are in bad faith.

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