

Why the Developing World May Be Bitcoin's Biggest Customer - nicpottier
http://blog.nyaruka.com/bitcoins-bottom-billion-why-the-developing-world-may-be-bitcoins-biggest-customers

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sp4ke
I am an entrepreneur from north Africa living in France and I am as astonished
as you at how people criticizing bitcoin never talk about it's potential for
countries like mine where there's no well established and easy payment system.

Glad you wrote a good article about it.

If bitcoins works, it will change the faith of developing countries and I
sincerely hope it does.

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clueless123
Like the author I also have my reservations about how solid bitcoin is, but
regarding what such a currency would do for emerging economies I totally agree
with his article.

From personal experience, the situation here (in Peru) like in most countries
in South America is a milder version of what he describes in Africa where if
you belong to the top tier of society, it is not that hard to get a credit
card, but it is a big problem to get veted to collect payments. If you don't
belong to that top tier, then you can hardly participate of it. (Banking use
in Peru is 30%, cell phones 70+%)

While bitcoin would incredibly accelerate development of the economy, banks
would not be happy at all of loosing control over a very profitable market and
government would have a heart attack over tax revenue, money laundering and
such.

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codeulike
_If you think getting a Visa card is hard in Rwanda, getting a merchant
account so you can accept Visa payments is a whole different story. And again,
here Bitcoin shines. Someone in Rwanda that builds a compelling service can
instantly start taking payments from the rest of the world, without asking for
permission, without filling out any paperwork and with the same fee structure
as the biggest retailers._

Brilliant blog post. The best idea around Bitcoin I've heard for a while.
There's probably room for a startup to help spread bitcoin in the developing
world

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sgornick
More commentary from Reddit:

\- <http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1bzekm>

