Everytime when people talk about remittance through bitcoin I feel funny,
The reason is: why even bother to remit in bitcoin and convert back and forth with some other currency.
If BTC becomes well accepted currency, we will have only one global currency!
Everything from cup of coffee, salries to private jets could be denominated in BTC, so no funny business of back and forth conversions.
it just doesn't make sense to keep converting back and forth given the ease of handling BTC vs other currencies, except for few situations like people stuck on forest/hill with no electricity and internet they are going to prefer paper currencies (even they can have printed BTC bills)!
+1
Remittance is really something that cannot be associated with Bitcoin in all its grandness.
However, there will be providers in the short term who will be much needed to bridge this gap between today and tomorrow. Say, the next 5-10 years?
Providers like exchanges, remittance converters/ delivery systems, banks/ local storage centers, processors for goods, currency changers etc.
Local grievance/ clarification centers & meetup groups, user friendly and super cheap hardware, need to grow vastly, before this can spread into a 10 Rs chai walla phenomen across India.
Today's effort to generate a remittance through Bitcoin would be (Lets take US and India for Example)
- Get verified, etc to Purchase Bitcoin on an Exchange in USD or buy from localbitcoins/ f2f or Spend a bunch of money on miners to mine Bitcoin.
- Send the funds to someone in India, who needs to find an exchange to get verified, etc or sell on localbitcoins/ f2f or find a processor to get the goods that they need.
- Pay fees/ margin everywhere, handle volatility risks, Buy Chai!
Compared to find an international remittance service that should charge about the same fees to get the same task done, minus the volatility risk.
Now, if the Chai walla accepted Bitcoin, that would be a different tale for remittances. Send 10 Rs from someone in the US, after the person requesting funds, sends a text with the vendors public key or QR. Go to the medical store and at the billing counter, get your bill paid directly by your son working in Dubai. And these services CAN be automated.
Cross border micro payment magic is what Bitcoin really enables. If we can get more local providers to bridge the gap between what we have and what we need, it would definitely force the remittance market to evolve.