Could Bitcoin ease the pain of Africa's migrant workforce? | Hacker News Reader

Could Bitcoin ease the pain of Africa's migrant workforce?

bbc.com

23 pointsSami_Lehtinen26 comments

Given the plundering of insecure Bitcoin exchanges, I'm reminded of this passage from Gibson's Count Zero:

The Wig punched himself through a couple of African backwaters and felt like a shark cruising a swimming pool thick with caviar

https://books.google.com/books?id=7RpZX8mYKVMC&pg=PT139&lpg=...

Possibly, even given Betteridge's Law of Headlines. The article is quite right that sending money is very expensive in Africa. I have employed (and still do employ) a few migrant workers and I can assure you half their pay goes home and that it costs a hefty cut for them to do so. I've experimented with various ways of making it easier for them, but short of sewing US dollars into their clothing when they travel home, there isn't much out there. The more SADCC countries start accepting Bitcoin, the easier this will become.

Are they working legally? If so why don't they just carry the money home with them. As long as they declare it if it's over the threshold($10,000 in the US) and they have proof of work which they should have if it was legal work they will almost certainly have no problems.

almost certainly have no problems.

would you trust your life's savings to a bored and underpaid customs official in a poor country not 'fining' you for not having the correct paper work, or even just accusing you of forging the paperwork and confiscating the cash?

More than I'd trust some random person promising to give me cash for my bitcoin.

No way. You'd really trust you luck with crooked cops on both sides of the border (look up civil forfeiture)? Even if it took a sec to find a bitcoin broker, it's far harder to steal so you'll eventually get your fiat money even if you have to look around for a buyer.

Are you serious?

In the First World, yes. Easy cross-border is an exception on this continent though. To give you an example, I traveled from South Africa to Zimbabwe via the Beitbridge border post last year and it was an absolute nightmare, taking nearly 8 hours just to get through the Zimbabwe side. Our party was flush with US dollars (they don't take anything else), had all the paperwork and an infinite supply of patience. We could at least afford to pay the ridiculous "fees" and "levies" to get in. My workers? Not so much.

You are at the mercy of the staff at an African border post. And boy do they know it.

tl;dr no. Someone actually tried to crowdsource a Bitcoin remittance case that worked out ahead of existing mechanisms, and nobody could:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/2ne03g/the_buttcoi...

It turns out: that last mile? That's the bit you're paying Western Union for.

(This is without getting into how hard it is to convert actual money to Bitcoin [Know Your Customer] and how hard it is to get actual money back out of Bitcoin exchanges [the only reason the spread here http://www.thebtcindex.com/ can exist at all]. Bitcoin exchanges are sufficiently awful hives of scum and villainy in the first world.)

If I'm reading your link right, bitcoin did win in the China case, with a cost of 0.4%?

But your link is to compete against scenarios where "existing mechanisms" cost 1.2%, and bitcoin came close to that. While BBC is talking about scenarios that cost an average of 12.3%

In addition, the linked case is tipping the field slightly by requiring that the money start in a bank and end in a bank, while the BBC article is discussing underbanked people.

Bitcoin works great at small scale where you have a company on the receiving side willing to buy up the excess incoming volume at par with international costs. If a lot of people started doing it though there would be a lot more local sell pressure and the prices people could get in that country would drop and raise the overall cost of the transaction.

Bitcoin can be good for remittances but if it becomes popular in a region it will out price itself for that and other reasons.

Also almost all bitcoin services I've seen so far have saved money two ways. 1. They have offloaded the last mile cost on another service(a banks ATM network, or corner store, etc). If it becomes popular those services are going to start wanting their cut much they same as WU would pay them. 2. They ignore KYC. Again if they get popular the banking industry will definitely apply pressure to get them to start following this which will again increase costs.

If you're underbanked you're probably not likely to be able to use or convert your BTC at the other end of the transaction, hence the value of that expensive "last mile" at Western Union or Moneygram. The exceptions the article discusses are the mobile money consumers in Africa, but here the conventional remittance fees are also a lot lower.

A quick apples to apples comparison suggests that converting sterling to Kenyan Shilling denominated M-PESA mobile money costs around 4-5% including forex and fees via Western Union and Moneygram (unlikely to be the cheapest of many providers in the marketplace) whilst sending to M-PESA via the BBC-advertised remittance services costs a 3% forex fee plus cost of obtaining Bitcoin (surprisingly expensive if your salary is paid in GBP; I'm struggling to see any options below 1%, and the cheaper ones aren't instant either).

There might be an advantage for the Bitcoin remittance services, but perhaps not one worth the additional inconvenience, delay and counterparty risk. Downward pressure on the major remittance firms' prices is always welcome, but given the relative lack of demand to convert in the other direction from KSH to BTC, the cost bases for these cryptocurrency enabled entrants into the market might actually be higher than the major remittance firms, especially if they grow...

In practice, even rebit.ph (which is having a good go at the remittance case) is having serious problems finding Bitcoin buyers at the Philippines end (because every peso you give out, you need to have sold Bitcoin to buy) - http://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/2vypy9/if_i_...

No.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines

It may be time to retire Mr. Betteridge.

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=betteridge&sort=byDate&prefix&...

But it's so totally appropriate given the deluge of BITCOIN WILL SAVE THE WORDL articles.

This is not such an article.

It is, you know. "Remittances!" is a standard Bitcoin selling point. Because it sounds plausible. Even if it doesn't actually work out that way, because it turns out that last mile is the expensive bit.

Terms come into currency to fulfil a need; as long as headlines like this are on the front page, then "Betteridge" will remain useful.

Maybe that need is why change (log) currency is so important. With headligns we say yes or no rules, there is forced error between terms.

Where really terming needs worthy space (safe) to audit psychotechnological/narrative trails, we fight judging betters as-if technology today has limited memory.

A. https://archive.today/memdu (see History, judge yourself)

It isn't a term, it's a platitude. Mentioning it upon sight of a question mark has become a local tic—little more than a specialized "first!". Predictable comments add no new information and so dilute the threads.

But what's worse is the attempt to stop discussion. Yes, baity titles often ask baity questions, but HN has other means to deal with those. Meanwhile, other questions are legitimate and deserve sincere consideration.

Betteridge was interesting when pg first brought it up [1]. It was fun to toss about for a while. Three years and hundreds of invocations later, it is long past cliché.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4092880

I haven't once seen Betteridge's Law be 'useful'. It's an academic quirk, and there are enough exceptions that 'law' is a misnomer. I can't recall a single time when someone has mentioned it and it's actually added to the conversation.

Almost every time someone asks a question in a headline, it's because it's BS and they don't think they could get away with making the statement directly.

It's a more specific way of stating that an article is clearly space-filling BS. As this one is.

So, you're saying that stating Betteridge's Law is a way of making an empty, contentless comment that doesn't look like an empty, contentless comment? We can do without either. If you think something is nonsense, say so, and give a reason. Don't just make a useless comment.

This is the first time I see Algolia in action. So far it seems to do the best job of all HN search engines that I have seen.

Does it mean HN is paying Algolia for this service or is this just a trial ?

Algolia has been HN's official search for a long time now!

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