At least beanie babies are real, crypto isn't real at all.
After 15 years of Bitcoin, nothing of any legitimate value has been made from it.
After 15 years of Bitcoin, nothing of any legitimate value has been made from it.
Going to need a citation on those two claims. You can lookup fees for both, right now BTC fees are about one USD more than a WU transfer. WU is subject to banking laws and if you're going to claim it's "unreliable", you're going to need to provide some evidence of that. It's literally their business, and a heavily regulated one at that.
BTC transaction fees are greater than WU, it takes longer, and of course you need to deal with BTC. At the US side you're still beholden to all the AML and KYC issues that you'd need to deal with anyway, again unless you are doing it illegally.
Show me the "unbanked" who can use BTC but somehow cannot walk up to a WU stand with cash in hand. It's a preposterous argument.
I just used this for $3000 to Algeria and I get $14.99 plus an absurdly bad exchange rate of 120 DZD where the bank rate is 134, so basically another 10.5% fee, which means $300 lost.
Frankly I think you have no clue what you are talking about if you somehow believe Western Union is superior in functionality and utility to Bitcoin.
Bitcoin transaction fee is currently equivalent to $7.60 and that is a flat fixed fee for any amount, even $1M worth.
Additionally there are multiple Bitcoin exchanges operating in Algeria, https://www.bitrawr.com/algeria and you won’t lose anything in exchange rates in local currency transactions.
That's it.
And please don't reply "you need to pay taxes with it", if an economically failed state uses a currency that no one wants, it doesn't have value even if the state requires it for taxes.
And this is true for everything. Things have value because people value them. Even food. A steak has no value if no one wants to eat it.
Except crypto doesn't have value at all as it's being manipulated and wash traded on exchanges, especially when Tether is printing constantly and pumping up the price of Bitcoin.
Crypto is essentially all based on a pyramid scheme at best and a ponzi scheme at worst.
It's just a regular database you need.
Using overhyped fancy technology like blockchains, DLTs doesn't solve anything legitimately useful.
But if there is a 'usecase' it is only of the worst and illegitimate kind, ransomware payments, speculation, ponzi / pyramid schemes, etc.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
If you're working with lots of money and can't rope in one or more trusted peers (a bank, say) to smooth things out, with that trust backed up by a robust & proven legal framework... uh, that sure narrows down the general type of activity you're likely engaged in.
Which is what we are in. The governments can’t be trusted they have proved that over and over.
The big mystery is why so many collectivists and statists get so worked up and angry with the success of Bitcoin! Not why Bitcoin is working as intended.
I don't have a dog in this fight but it's an easy argument on either side.