Topic: Strike added Philippines to the "Send Globally" list (Read 172 times)

read strikes ToS and FAQ.
yes taxes apply as do variety of exchange rates commissions and fees.

strike says that it uses services such as plaid, pouch as its service providers but then tries to escape its liability by saying how strike does not hold value and the onus of the value being transmitted is on the users agreement with those services. and there fee's and where strike just takes a commission from said services


oh and strike says its not liable for any payment delays or bottlenecks of the services or network issues of bitcoin or lightning. so yea.. he knows there are some

take for instance LN' the average channel only allows ~$846 inbound and ~$846 outbound per channel average ($1692 per average channel)
meaning there will be routing issues if you are trying to move value more then $846 and heck any amount if someone just moved value before you where the router channels have not "rebalanced" (1ml average channel stats: Average Channel Capacity 0.070 BTC ) (1692.00)

did you know that strike tries doing this game with el salvadors chivo wallet. and within 3 months el-salv dropped strikes partnership due to all the LN bottlenecks of payment failures and delays due to lightnings known liquidity issues
95% success rate amounts under  0.000272 BTC (upto $6.55 if direction side is fully balanced)
75% success rate amounts under  0.005000 BTC (upto $120 if direction side is fully balanced)
50% success rate amounts under  0.020000 BTC (upto $480 if direction side is fully balanced)
25% success rate amounts under  0.050000 BTC (upto $1.2k if direction side is fully balanced)
emphasis: depending on route path and balances along route. and how many users have used said route earlier before route "rebalance"

im all for using bitcoin to do remittance.. but not using strikes "service"

oh and by the way. if "plaid" and "pouch" were getting into being bitcoin/crypto exchangers. they would and could easily adopt just swapping stable coin reserves and do away with strikes hop, skip and jump mechanisms of him taking commission at multiple steps he is involved in.

which would actually save plaid and pouch alot of money, which could pass on savings to customers

im not endorsing stable coins. and would prefer plaid and pouch used bitcoin. im just saying that strikes business plan is not helpful for those wanting to remit fiat.

I've never claimed that though.

I'm simply stating that Strike is adding another option of transferring fiat, using Bitcoin as the transport layer in between.

Maybe in some cases Strike ends up being more expensive, and in others cheaper. The point is that there's a new way of doing international fiat transfers, using Bitcoin.

Also, since you mentioned fees, here are WU fees:


I haven't seen a direct comparison from Strike, Western Union, and Transferwise, but at least it's another option to consider. Also, there's the waiting time to receive the funds. With Bitcoin this can be done much faster.

nope

strike does not "use bitcoin without any companies"
there is in the US-fillo example
plaid-strike-pouch
thats 3 companies involved

it sounds cheaper. when you only look at one part of the journey.. but add it all together. for the full trip of the transaction. it adds up
what your not realising is

currently the fiat process
transferwise, western union have agents across the world
lets just use transferwise
a fillo TW agent holds peso and a us TW agent holds dollar
they just talk to each other to take dollars and give out peso. where TW takes profit
1 company using its reserves of its agents within the same company

with crypto there are the 3 companies mentioned. where each are taking a cut..
theres a fee for the 'plaid'+strike us start of the remittance
theres a btc fund lock for the LN+strike lockin
theres a btc broadcast for the LN+strike unlock
theres a fee for the pouch+strike PH end of the remittance

everyone knows that btc can be anything from 10cents-$1.50 per btc tx meaning 20cents-$3 in and out of LN
then the exchange rates of dollar in and exchange rate of peso out. which can be a few dollars too

is not something like sub penny per $1k remitted

also try to read the terms and conditions. yep even strike says in its sole discretion they can ask for account verification and identity
https://beta.strike.me/legal/tos/ 6(c) & 7
yep they wont let you use debit cards(virtual visa) they want real bank accounts where the name on bank account matchs your name on strikes service account

even with the send global you also need to provide full details of the recipient

so if your thinking its super cheap and KYC free, you would be wrong

they have other nasty terms like waiving the right to sue them in court and only seek reparations in their chosen arbitrations and you waive your right to class action them in they were to go bankrupt

as for privacy, pfft

Of course now they charge you fees, but even now it's less than the competition.

I'm referring to the future, in which you won't be needing to convert the money, you simply transfer Bitcoin and skip the conversion fee completely.

But you need to get there step by step.

First we had companies like TransferWise, which tried to minimize the fees for transferring fiat, but still using only fiat.

Then you have companies like Strike, which go even lower by using Bitcoin as the transport layer.

Then we will just use Bitcoin without the need of any company.

Yeah, there's a lot of things going on with the Philippines as far as Bitcoin, they have the beloved local exchanges coins.ph and there are competitions as well. And then lately Gcash, the now number 1 virtual wallet is goes international:

https://bitpinas.com/price-analysis/gcash-international/

And this news as well:

https://bitpinas.com/cryptocurrency/gcrypto-now-available-to-select-users/

Of course not, but the question is whether he is able to run a successful business while providing a useful service to the user with fees so cheap that he hardly notices them.

What I see as bad is KYC, but I guess that's more of a legal thing than something they've willingly implemented.

Include also the Filipinos who are considered Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW) who are working abroad and sending money from their families to the Philippines, this is common here in the Philippines, I asked some of these people who are getting money from family members who work abroad and most of them are using money remittance and what I observe is money remittance is worst, we all know that it takes a lot of fees and sometimes you need to wait for a very long time before you get the money. Huge W for Filipinos!

you really think strike does things for free?
you really think there wil be no fee

think about it rationally
the peso to usd via strikes favourite method requires
a exchange spread/conversion rate (peso to btc)
a tx fee to lock coin (btc-msat)
a small route fee.
a unlock btc(broadcast) fee (msat-btc)
a  exchange spread/conversion rate btc usd

strike isnt doing this out the goodness of their heart
they take small commission from the IN processing and OUT of the whole movement, atleast 3 fee cost opportunities to take profits from

https://beta.strike.me/faq/fees/


yep strike earns from the fiat exchanges margin and by being part of the lightning route in and out

It seems Filipinos have reason to be happy lately, at least when it comes to Bitcoin related news - because they definitely did a good thing by positioning one of their islands (Boracay) as a popular tourist destination where Bitcoin is accepted in hundreds of places across the island. Perhaps we can complain that these payments are not carried out directly on-chain, but things simply have to be simplified for the average person to accept them.

Strike has only one "flaw", which is that it is only available (for sender) in the US, with the exception of some federal states.

^ that's probably the most disruptive way BTC can be used right now - as a transportation layer between different financial entities. I hope more platforms consider doing that approach, and then we can start talking about "send bitcoin instantly" features for these platforms where the user sends and receives BTC without any service fee it might take to cover the tx fee itself.

Strike is helping millions of people by simply reducing the cost of moving money around the world. They do that by using Bitcoin as the money transport layer, and then once the money is in the target country, they simply buy whatever fiat they use there and deposit it in the person's bank account.

Strike's "Send Globally" feature, which started a few months ago, allows you to send fiat from the US to an increasing number of countries:


Recently, Strike partnered with Pouch.ph in order to add The Philippines to that list:


Of course it would be better if they simply use Bitcoin natively, but we're not there yet. This is the beginning of a huge transformation worldwide, happening in countries that rely on remittances first, then the rest.

This is just the beginning, foreign exchange fees will be a thing of the past next when you could simply move around money with Bitcoin all around the world. And then, you won't even need to convert Bitcoin anyway.