Topic: Services possible only using BTC (Read 1819 times)

The thing is, if I have trusted offices at both sides, I don't need Bitcoin, I can keep my own accounts. I don't know why Western Union charges so much, probably both regulatory overhead and transfer risks.

What Bitcoin provides is a trusted ledger, so independent parties can operate such offices around the world and use whatever exchange method they see fit. Sender would receive a private key as proof of transaction. Though there still needs to be a secondary communication channel between exchanges so that the sending party knows how much to send to match the correct amount on the other side.

One obvious one is making micropayments both possible and frictionless.

If people got into the habit of making a small reward for a good blog article (for example) because sending 5c or 10p to someone was as trivial as dropping the metal equivalent into a coin tray (see http://YouTube.com/user/MultiBitOrg for an example screencast), then it would:

a) drastically change the presentation of those websites - site owners would have more cash to improve design
b) reduced advertising and affiliate cross-selling as an income stream - site owners no longer operate at the behest of advertisers
c) coupled with OpenId this could act as a micro-subscription model so that a tiny amount buys you enhanced access for a long time - no pestering for payment
d) this may promote more people to make their income online since the barrier to entry is much reduced - less commuting and office space
e) payment could be optional with the site owner relying on a few good seeds to support the leechers

Clearly all this could be gamed.

Sites could introduce paywalls to block access to content that once they were forced to make free. However, if sites got into the habit of making drivel expensive then they would see a corresponding drop in revenue as people went to other competing sources and spent their coins there instead.

In my experience if people are offered something for a fair price then they are largely prepared to pay it, but they punish hard for being ripped off.

Donations to wikileaks, occupy wall streets etc...

A neat idea - Bitcoin currently doesn't have anywhere near the reach of Western Union, it's somewhat limited as a way of transferring money internationally - the question is how to achieve this? Remember that in order for this to work you'd need roughly equal flows of money in both direction, which may be hard to achieve.

You don't because they only do it inside USA. According to them, they would need to have an office in each other country in order to take their business internationally. They could start with England maybe. IntersangoGBP has a reasonable liquidity I think...

Anyway, they currently only work with merchants so even if they had an office in Brazil, this kind of money transfer could be subject to other types of regulations. Actually, I would like to know what are the legal implications of doing this kind of service.

that is what bit-pay does but how do I use it to wire money to Brazil or wherever?

That's what bit-pay does. This would interesting if it could be done between different countries. The greatest problem I see right now is the lack of liquidity outside of USD exchanges.

dummy question :

What is stopping someone from having it setup this way.

Person A wants to send money to person B

Person A sends 10 bitcoins to an exchange

The Exchange autosells the 10 bitcoins at market rate

Person B gets the 25 bucks.

technically it should cut down on transaction costs until the exchange wanted to bill like western union... but I don't know how that system works 100%.

Killer app.
Sure it is.

Dan Kaminsky ?

There's already a discussion about money transfer over Bitcoin here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/biz-idea-rfc-international-cash-transfer-via-a-bitcoin-based-network-48704 . I would love to hear your ideas.

Money services like western union is now possible for any 2 individuals who trust eachother with little hassle and low cost.
A nifty little app to agree on exchange rate +-%. I believe some apps already do that. 

These gangsters charge fortunes to send small amounts of money around to developing countries.

Not wanting to be rude or anything, but I can't see the utility on such messaging service. If it's just backing up some data, you can do much better using services like Wuala...


Sure. Anything that you can't legally or safely do with conventional electronic means of payment is a niche for bitcoin, and there are many. From illegal trade to anonymous investments, and all sort of tax evasion techniques daily performed with cash, now can be done remotely. Avoiding labor laws while hiring someone remotely is another option that just came to my mind.

The great majority of these are perfectly ethical. I don't think we should be ashamed of promoting bitcoin usefulness for these kind of things.

The bitcoin currency currently offers no major advantage over USD. Everything you can do with BTC, you could also do (well almost) with USD.
Creating services which are available only using BTC may give this extra push to the bitcoin currency so it doesn't lose its value totally as seen in the last days rate.

Bitcoin Message Service which was announced https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/announce-bitcoin-message-service-v10-within-block-chain-47283 earlier this month and mentioned https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/the-bitcoin-killer-app-list-48989 among The Bitcoin killer app list, aims to this direction, giving an option to write messages into the block-chain which means order of 10^6 scattered copies around the globe safely kept by individuals, impossible to delete messages and possibly anonymous. Such a service would not have been possible before the bitcoin times, and it requires the use of BTC.

Using such a service directly contributes new users to the bitcoin community.
Are there more such services? Do you know any plans plans for such services?