Topic: Bitcoin in India - page 5. (Read 10475 times)

Actually no one knows about such technology and concept about bitcioin.Partly cause, it has not caused any major scandal or such events.Indian media gives very less importance to international news unless, its direct involved with local interest.Media will definitely highlight bitcoin as untraceable medium of sending money if one such incidence happens and this news will be out to our 1.23 billion population.Already there has been issues regarding top politician,corporates and businessmen dumping their black money to tax havens of swiss banks.

I wonder about this also. For the reasons the OP mentioned, it seems a natural fit.

Unless indians themselves start to see bitcoin as an investment option. You just need one investor, willing to buy with cash at market rate, in one city, to have functioning remittance with 1% fee. I think there might be people who are willing to invest like this, since it is nices to buy bitcoins with cash, than with bank transfer.

Perfect utility for this is of course my newly launched service localbitcoins.com

bitcoinwireless seems good, having etisalat in the list as well (telecom provider where I live, UAE)

How about augmenting the remittance with a little bitcoin?  Make it a challenge, to see what the recipient could trade them for.  Think of it as seeding the field. and learning.

And soon, in India there will be actual expenses that can be paid for with bitcoins.  If those bitcoins will pay to buy airtime on Airtel and TATA wireless, then that is money that didn't need to go through the remittance service.

 - http://www.bitcoinwireless.com (coming soon)  
 - https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/beta-testing-bitcoinwirelesscom-buy-wireless-time-from-over-300-carriers-84348

Nice to see the discussion about bitcoin in my native country.
Yes, gold and stock market is a common form of investment in India.

I have known bitcoin now for more than a year.
I am an expat and sending inward remittance to India every month.

There is a transaction fees of 15 AED (~4 USD), and the money is credited in 24 hours or less.

So for me, I dont think currently remittance in the form of bitcoin is feasible.

Just my thoughts.

I have doubts that that's true. Ignoring all the fees right now, people sending remittance usually aren't the richest and probably try and save every penny they can so I'd think trustworthiness of a currency is pretty high on their value scale meaning Bitcoin must become a lot ore established before people like that would trust it over traditional banking. Now I don't see a reason why some day this wouldn't happen I just don't think we're anywhere close to that day right now, at least not on a grand scale.

Remittances from USD or Euro to local currencies can be paid for by people that typically make a living through risk such as pawn shops and private lenders. The convenience of giving their customers a way for overseas loved ones to simply send a few bucks to cover an emergency through Bitcoin will make business owners have less risk with their money. It is cost prohibitive to send small sums via Western Union.

There are bank remittance branches of foreign banks in the US that make transfers fairly cheap, but not very convenient when the local banks themselves are sparse, crowded, and not open when you need them. People need cash. In developing countries you don't just pull out a VISA card at a street merchant. Bitcoin can be that cash.

When india understand what Bitcoin is, and this happens there will be no need to exchange the Bitcoins and Bitcoins will be the thing that everyone wants.

If btc is to be used as an intermediary in remitance business, there will still be a need to get usd or euros into India and exchange them for rupees that are paid out to the receiver. This will reinstate the very same cost you were trying to avoid.
If there were simply an exchange in India or Filipines or Vietnam, the imbalance would drive the local btc value down until arbitrage becomes an option - and arbitrage would involve exchange fees, spread, and wire transfer fees.
Someone on this forum pointed out that the cost of moving government fiat across borders is much lower for banks and such, so they win again...   

I just penned a post about my return trip form India, not aware about this thread. Guess I missed it.

I just happened to me in India during the '01 Christmas season. I toured the country for three weeks. I vividly remember the talk on the street everywhere I went about the stock exchange in India. In fact, if I recall correctly, a lot of the trading was taking place outdoors, outside of the stock exchange buildings. The reason I remember this obscure fact is because I happened to remember at the time that the original stock exchange here in the US took place under a tree on Wall Street (paraphrased).

The reason for stating the above is that I experienced first hand how the Indian people feel about finance, money, dollars, and gold. In fact, I was informed beforehand to make sure I bought with me to India as many dollars as possible. When I say dollars, I mean singles, opposed to fives, tens, and twenties. For some odd reason, the merchants liked the singles the best. I later learned that they exchange the dollars (not just singles) in Iran for gold. Once the gold was in India, the jewelry makers formed it into those Mr. T-type necklaces the Indian women are accustomed to wearing. In fact, it was, and maybe still is, cheaper for people to buy a tooled piece of 22K gold jewelry in Indian, than buying the same weight in 18K gold here in the US. On the surface, it sounds crazy, but trust me, because I knew first-hand that this is/was true back then.

All that said, I firmly believe that Bitcoin could easily prosper in India. And they do wire a hell of a lot money overseas from the US, as well as other countries. All it would take is to show them how much money they would save on transfer fees alone, and they would be all over it like flies on a freshly made Chicken Marsala dinner.

~Bruno~

I don't want to come off as a racist, but I don't think Bitcoin will be accepted anywhere before SE Asia, South America, and Africa. Basically, Bitcoin will thrive where people have been recently oppressed and don't give a shit anymore.

Two Bitcoin articles that were in the media in India:

 - http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/wire-news/factbox-what-is-bitcoin-currency-or-con_687590.html - 2012-04-2
 - http://blogs.economictimes.indiatimes.com/choicerules/entry/trust-and-bitcoin - 2011-09-11

Here's a great article from Transaction World:


 - http://www.transactionworld.net/articles/2012/april/money_guy.asp

Well, there's the saying that you can recognize a pioneer by the arrows in his back.  There has never been a decentralized digital currency before, so nobody knows what to make of it.  There's nothing wrong with taking a conservative approach with something new -- that would describe the majority of the population.

Fortunately, those reading this thread don't fall under that category.

We are the part of the population that sees the potential.  We see the day that we don't need to give PayPal its pound of flesh.  We know that some day this will pay off where sending a remittance to family using bitcoins is a better alternative to sending fiat in one country and having it arrive as a different fiat currency in another.  We know that some day we'll be sending bitcoins, and those bitcoins will be of value to the recipient and thus spent or saved, but not exchanged into fiat.

There's just this sizable gap between where we are today and how we envision the future.  But we know how to get there.  Notme's inquiry is a perfect example of how it starts.  Then some day this guy will have been given the same request over a half dozen times, and then he might not be so quick to dismiss it.

I regularly do work for a guy in India.  When I suggested he pay in Bitcoin, this was his response:

So it seems Bitcoin doesn't have a very good reputation in his region, and they are hard to acquire. He would rather pay me more to cover Paypal fees than spend the time to figure it out.  Of course, this is just one guy, but maybe it gives an idea of the issues Indians face getting bootstrapped in the Bitcoin economy.

I've been thinking about this as well. I know someone with ties to india that's lived in the UK all his life. He has a bank account in India. He would be able to act as a market maker and accept Rupees into his Indian bank account and payout Bitcoins minus a commission.

There must be a lot of people in this situation and it wouldn't be long before locals saw the profit potential and started to make a market for themselves. Once you have market makers in a country workers can start accepting Bitcoins knowing that they can convert them to Rupees when needed.

Sound plausible ?

Are there no Western Union or Moneygram locations which can be used to send a monet transfer?   Here's an exchange that accepts Western Union money transfer (converted to Canadian Dollars / CAD first):
 - http://www.canadianbitcoins.com/westernunion.php

And here's some digital currency exchanges where Liberty Reserve can be purchased.  Liberty Reserve can then be used to purchase Bitcoins.
[cautioin though, LR exchanges are notorious for hidden fees, delays, etc.]
 - http://lrbuysell.com
 - http://www.libertyreserveindia.in

Here are ones that takes cash deposit at ICICI Bank, State Bank of India, and AXIS Bank or payment using Payza (formerly AlertPay) for instance:
 - http://ashishhundekar.com/buy
 - http://www.entelnova.com/indexhome.htm


Instead of an intermediary, bitcoins could be earned from trade when exporting.  Including exporting labor.

Here's a talk by Michael Levinson, VP of Product, oDesk, which has a lot of freelancers from developing nations.  He describes the challenges to (and importance of) paying those contract workers.  Notice that the bitcoin topic just keeps coming up over and over by those in the audience.
 - http://vimeo.com/29287295

Also, nothing is stopping a person in India from sending funds using PayPal to a friend in San Francisco and asking that friend to go down to 7-11 and load the funds using BitInstant.  If there are tourists, presumably the tourists will be looking to buy rupees, and might be informed ahead of time that bitcoins traded for rupees once at the hotel are how to get the best exchange rate.  There's nothing stopping a person in India from adding listings to http://BitMit.net, or http://CoinDL.com, for instance, to try to earn bitcoins.  

And "remittance" doesn't have to work the way Western Union works.  With Western Union (or moneygram, or PayPal, or whatever), there is a per-transaction cost so the recipient wants to (or must) cash out everything at one time.  With Bitcoin, cashing out can be done as it is needed.  Or perhaps there are goods and services that those bitcoins would buy.  Like Airtel and TATA wireless:
 - http://www.bitcoinwireless.com (coming soon)  
 - https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/beta-testing-bitcoinwirelesscom-buy-wireless-time-from-over-300-carriers-84348

Or web hosting, or VPN services, etc.
 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade



One of the first mining operations on GLBSE (April, 2011) was DISHWARA:
 - https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.363437
 - https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.628733

Like it or not, the world is run by the media. It's possible that there just hasn't been much news about Bitcoin in Indian media. This combined with the regulation could be why Bitcoin is not used there yet.

Remittance aside, why don't we hear about mining in India? Plenty of computers and geeks.
And what about Indians (programmers, graphics designers, etc.) working for bitcoin? I don't see it?