Topic: Three ways to save Bitcoin - page 3. (Read 3979 times)

MtGox is irrelevant as far as the remittance market is concerned.

Most of the people receiving remittances do not have bank accounts. The are currently served by a network of physical locations where they receive transfers in cash form.

Setting up these physical kiosks is a prerequisite to making inroads into the remittance market.

Just because you pretend the two are inseparable does not mean they are. If bitcoin became the primary form of money in Kenya or Zimbabwe or whatever, the economies of those countries would be further crushed when Satoshi or whoever decides to drop a load of 50k coins. And they will rightly see that a bitcoin is no better than a zimbabwe trillion dollar bill.

as to #3, this is what has made M Pesa successful in Kenya.  i can easily see Bitcoin being used favorably as a means of exchange in 3rd world countries.  the cost advantages are so numerous. 

the remittance mkt is also promising but there are only a certain number of exchanges out there.  mtgox does offer many currencies however.

I believe you completely missed the point of my post. I'm talking about using Bitcoin as a medium of exchange, not as an investment. I did mention using it as a means of forming capital in point 3 but that's more of a long-term effect than something to aspire to in the immediate future.

I don't know or care, but encouraging poor economies to accumulate their wealth in bitcoin strikes me as devious. People are guaranteed to lose wealth when investing in bitcoin. It is just a matter of who takes the brunt of it and when it happens. The velocity of money compared to the supply is so insanely out of whack. Until people decide they want to lose wealth just to ensure bitcoin gets stable, I don't think you're going to see a very stable BTC economy. Asking those without wealth as it is to take that hit is not very moral in my book.

I'm just pointing out some constructive things that people can do to make a positive contribution rather than useless, silly pledges to not exchange Bitcoins for fiat and other such nonsense.

I must plead ignorance since I don't read the Spanish section of the forum but can a middle/working class person in Colombia, Peru or Chile go to a physical location and exchange Bitcoins for local currency?

So your solution is have bitcoin do what it already does... except make more people use it. hrm.

Until the speculative bubble ends, which it never will as long as huge quantities of coins are hoarded, bitcoin is going to have trouble gaining acceptance. If the hoarded coins get into the supply, the price tanks even further lowering confidence even more. It's a pretty big bitch of a problem at this point.

In order for Bitcoin to succeed as a currency people need to use it but unfortunately only about 0.00001% of the population will use an alternative currency for purely philosophical reasons. Everybody else needs a very clear and compelling reason that's sufficient to overcome the switching costs and increased complexity of dealing with multiple currencies. Here are three areas in which Bitcoin could potentially offer the rest of the world sufficient value to cause more people to switch.

1. Superior alternative to Paypal, etc

I listed this one for completeness but I think everybody understands this one and many people are actively working on it already.

2. The remittance market

Anybody who has ever sent money to friends or family members in other countries (or even within the same country) knows how expensive and inconvenient these services tend to be. There's a lot of potential here especially since the Bitcoin network takes care of the transfers itself.

The missing piece that keeps people in the developed countries from using Bitcoin to send remittances back to the less-developed countries is a lack of exchanges in those countries.

People who have sufficient knowledge of international business, local laws, contacts in the recipient country and access to capital can start exchanges there and then put out information campaigns in the developed countries to let the target population know that if they send Bitcoins to their family abroad the recipients would have a way to turn those Bitcoins into local currency (emphasizing the speed and cost aspects of doing so).

3. The informal economy

There are billions of people in the world who are trapped in poverty due in no small part to their inability to accumulate capital. Any segment the banking and legal systems can not or will not serve yet where the participants have internet access is a potential area in which people can benefit from Bitcoin. Any time that technology can be used to bypass legal obstacles to supplying a good or service there's an opportunity to grow the Bitcoin economy and provide the individuals involved in that activity with the benefits that come with having access to the services normally supplied by banks.