
Bitcoin Is a Hit in Countries Where Locals Face Currency Troubles - jkuria
https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoin-is-a-hit-in-countries-where-locals-face-currency-troubles-1515067201
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yters
Makes sense. The actual world economy vastly outstrips the money in
circulation.

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rhlala
I dont think bitcoin is sustainable now, and miners have too much interest for
make any change, If you pick a Cryptocurrency like raiblock, \- Transferts are
instant. (5seg) \- No fees (you send 10 your friend get 10)

And this is for ever and even if all humans on earth use it, instant and 0
fees..

I dont see the benefits in using btc having micropayments/value storage
solved.

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lug0r
The advantage of bitcoin is that it's censorship resistant and descentralised.
I don't know of any other knock off cryptocurrency that does fulfill these two
aspects.

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tobltobs
but then again being decentralized results in being unusable as a payment
facility.

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Ftuuky
Not true. Lightning is being implemented and now you can make small quick
payments with very low fees.

Bitcoin is still in the early stages, many 2nd layer solutions are to be
implemented.

~~~
CryptoPunk
You need an on chain transaction to create a LN payment channel. And if you
only create one payment channel, you are highly dependent on the one peer you
connect to, and reveal your entire transaction graph to that peer and the
nodes the peer is connected to.

To get decentralized permissionless-ness and privacy, you need many channels.
And you need a lot BTC to put in all of these channels, as the LN depends on
BTC (or ETH or whatever cryptocurrency you're transferring) equaling the
maximum amount you may want to send in any one transaction being locked up in
the channel.

With transaction fees exceeding $15, Bitcoin is already unusable for the
majority of the world's population, even with the Lightning Network, and even
if each user only creates one payment channel.

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skydv
>The main attraction in bitcoin is the ability to transfer money without any
restrictions

yeah just pay 30$ per transaction and wait few days

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mrpopo
TBF the current state of Bitcoin is on par with what banks have always been
offering for international transfers. So, it still has the use case of sending
unrestricted amounts of money to a peer abroad.

However, I agree on the general sentiment. Transactions are more expensive
than they should be.

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raverbashing
> with what banks _in the US_ have always been offering

FTFY

And even with the likes of Transferwise, it's cheaper even using "traditional
banking"

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mrpopo
\- I am not american. I used international transfers with french, british,
japanese and korean banks, and there always was either a fee of 30~50$, or an
awful sub-market exchange rate.

\- TransferWise is not universal and does not work for many currencies,
including the Chinese Yuan and the Indian Rupee.

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sumedh
TransferWise can send rupees to Indian bank accounts and I am assuming the
reason they cannot take money out of India is because of Indian Govt forex
regulations.

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candiodari
And there's the next massive bitcoin advantage : you can bypass financial
regulations for normal people.

"Somehow" these rich bankers and regulators (mostly ex-bankers of course) do
not see the need for poor people to be able to transact either
internationally, or in some countries, at all (in anything but cash, and thus
very short distance only).

With bitcoin it's 30$, but there's no percentual charge (in fact the exchange
rate is often better than market for BOTH participants because bitcoin is
rising in value)

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sumedh
> because bitcoin is rising in value

and what happens when it drops in value, the poor guy lost money

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candiodari
Whereas if you use a bank transfer, a 3% drop is the base cost on every single
transfer. Bitcoin is volatile, but you'd very rarely have costs that high, and
as I stated before, usually the cost would be negative.

