Topic: Cryptocurrency and Remittences (Read 600 times)

Here is how HelloBit’s co-founder and CEO Ali Goss summarizes this conundrum in the insightful article by Bitcoin Magazine:

    “With bitcoin, you’re adding a third currency,” Goss said. “You go from U.S. dollar to bitcoin, and then from bitcoin to whatever the local currency is. You’re adding an extra FX move right there alone. That increases friction. On top of that, small startups don’t have a big FX department, and they don’t have the big abilities that come with such a department … they’re generating more costs for themselves, not less.”

The spreads are so high that even die-hard crypto cross-border players are using non-blockchain rails to complete transfers for those destinations. Yeap, you heard this right, EVERY so-called Bitcoin/blockchain money transfer startup pays banks to process a large portion, sometimes a majority, of its cross-border transfers. Here is ZipZap in this interview to CoinDesk:

    “ZipZap uses a combination of traditional (Swift) bank payment rails and blockchain technologies to find the least expensive and most efficient transfer option…”

But why would MoneyGram use Ripple/XRP and lose money on a double & more expensive conversion? Because Ripple now owns 10% of MoneyGram equity, because “scaling Blockchain” might fool some investors, and because it gets paid by Ripple to create an XRP liquidity in Mexico:



Therefore, rather than disrupt cross-border players or at least help them to serve unbanked, Blockchain players are using those firms to prop up their own printing press – any PR is a good PR as long as more naive consumers buy the made-up currency with otherwise no intrinsic value. Now you also understand why Facebook folks and their Silicon Valley friends were looking at this scheme and wanted in on the action with launching Libra.

That is the problem, if you want to use something small from altcoin list to have a faster and cheaper movement, you are not going to cash it out to fiat that easily, whats the point of changing money from person A to person B using something like nano first but then the person who gets the money turns that nano into bitcoin and then cashes out, it doesn't work unless you can cash out nano to fiat directly and easily.

It is why I feel like there is absolutely no reason to use anything other than bitcoin and ethereum, ethereum is usually capable of turning into fiat in many places as well so that works but that's about it, only a few places have litecoin as well because of the back in the day popularity of it but most new places don't have that neither.

Among altcoins, I have only seen ethereum that has survived so far and has some good number of investors too. Though it is not as potential a coin as bitcoin but a trustworthy one. No other altcoin has been able to replace it. Comparatively, bitcoin is a way too fast and profit promising, and the main purpose of dealing in coins is money. SO it is best to invest in bitcoin and not waste time here and there.

I believe so, that's one reason that Congress was a bit hard on it. If it wasn't for scandals like Cambridge Analytica, they probably wouldn't have scrutinized it as closely.

Not to mention it's election season. These politicians likely saw how the public reacted to Zuckerberg and want to capitalize on that.

I understand you and the rest of the huge populace that are seemingly afraid of what the name Facebook could bring to their wallets, information, location, etc. I even believe that the biggest factor why this project is like a dud from the very beginning is that it is being started by Facebook. It is the reason why the project is going to be a hard sell not just to the governments and their regulators but also to the rest of the common users.

Thank you. Yeah, I just read that all of their partners are backing away from it. I just don't trust facebook so I'm glad.

Nothing so far has been said from the Libra association yet whether they will disassociate each other because of what is happening. I can only think of the lobbyist  facebook had hired to make some negotiations. One congress has expressed his support already for Libra, this is a sign that they may really be continuing what was planned.

There seem to have two parties not wanting facebook to pursue though, One is the crypto community itself and the government which they could easily come to terms. For crypto community, they can ignore all of us once they are approved. That's the only we can do but of course we can still convince the mass not to use libra.

Not all actually. I think only less than half of the members of their association have left out of heavy nudges by the governments. But it is enough for the others to lost interest in pursuing what they have started, at least for now. So far, I would conclude that the dream of the team will remain to be a dream, far from reality. There is no reason for them to force themselves into the market which is showing signs of repugnance to it.

Thank you. Yeah, I just read that all of their partners are backing away from it. I just don't trust facebook so I'm glad.

Maybe because it's backers are withdrawing from the project and Facebook's prime market US doesn't like Libra's concept.
For the use of remittance, bitcoin could still be a good option. Though it's fee seems large for small transactions, it's much better than swift fees or western union fees for sending remittance. There are other options like lightning network or the BEP2 token from binance but it would depend on the parties involved more than the choice of currency.

Why is the Libra dream dead? (Which I hope it is.)

They've ruined their reputation with all those info dumps so no wonder everyone's ganging up on them. It seems to be "cool" to diss the company.

People also fear that their Libra wallets could just be as easily locked down like how an FB account can get locked for expressing "wrongthink" or being mass reported by bots. Certainly doesn't inspire confidence. I'd also like an alt that is better integrated with various platforms to easily perform things that bitcoin can be currently inefficient with but I wouldn't like it to be by Facebook.

In terms of potential, Libra has a lot to be honest. If a certain project with limited funding has vast possibilities and potentials, Libra has much more of them with all their partner companies. Facebook alone has what it takes to create a coin full of potential. Together with their wealthy partner companies, they could hire the best people in the world in terms of blockchain technology development and programmers. But all these potentials are now fading with the project getting attacked by governments all over the world. 

Ripple, which was the stablecoin that was supposed to be ideal for remittences seems to be a failure because you can only convert it to bitcoin and USD:

The fees climbing up when the network is crowded is like the nature of blockchain and if Libra is about to use blockchain aswell they will definitely face the same problem. it is not like paypal that is a centralized company basically all the transaction doesn't need hash power and no need confirmation aswell blockchain is different to that and I think that's what you lose when you are expecting something decentralized. Crypto is indeed quite behind in term of remmitances but there are plenty of cryptos out there that can be used for remmitances and still fast anyway. About Libra, it's not even released yet so we can only wait.

I think Libra will be an altcoin that has functions for several other platforms and may compete in the XRP and XLM classes, but I heard a number of issues stating that Libra was rejected as an alternative payment so I feel Libra still has no potential certainty resulting from.