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I point you back to my 1st example: this overheard (offices, employees) is what Bitcoin makes unnecessary if users can spend the coins directly, or exchange them directly for cash with friends/family/people in their community, or use a Bitcoin ATM (ATMs cost less to operate than a full blown WU-type office so they would lead to lower fees - anything below the average worldwide remittance costs of 8.5% is better.)

You say Bitcoin WOULD (conditional tense) not make things cheaper, but if adoption continues (the condition we are talking about) it WOULD. Perhaps you do not communicate clearly and meant to say WILL instead of WOULD. In other words you don't believe in its adoption? But then your statement becomes obvious ("if Bitcoin's adoption fail it will not make things cheaper", duh).




Yes but again they can't. If you used local bitcoins or a bitcoin ATM to buy and sell bitcoin it would cost you more using almost any ATM around.

It wouldn't make things cheaper. The people with the money on the other side to run the western union shop are the same people with the money on the other side to buy the ATM or the liquidity to give you cash for your bitcoin. They have no incentive to lower the price just because you use bitcoins instead of their traditional services.

Side note:

Overstock released their Q2 results today. So now we can say for sure if it's just a case of them having a slow second quarter which is leading to the dropping bitcoin revenue! Turns out their revenue is up for the second quarter. It's just bitcoin sales that are down.

Unless you want to argue that bitcoin sales are detached from normal sales and operate on an offset cycle I think you have to admit that you were incorrect there.


"they can't"

Yes they can. I already gave you the Italy->China example. I already said Bitcoin ATMs have fees lower than the worldwide remittance average of 8.5%. You initially said if the Bitcoin infrastructure and services are available that it "would not" make remittances cheaper. I am showing you it does. I gave you hard evidence. You gave me footnotes about a hypothetical service on a slide deck.

"are the same people"

No they are not. Do you not understand the market dynamics? A WU competitor who installs a network of Bitcoin ATMs has lower operational costs and overhead than WU (who has offices + employees staffing offices all day), therefore they have an incentive to compete and beat WU's costs.

Overstock: no you still have to wait longer before concluding anything. Bitcoin sales are somewhat detached. For example we know there was a spike of Bitcoin sales in Q1 because this is when they started accepting it, so a initial surge of Bitcoin enthusiasts purchased stuff in Q1 (I bought a $150 kitchen bin from them, haha).


You gave me an example of someone with a bank account on both sides. What I'm saying is most remittances where price is an issue don't have that benefit.

> I already said Bitcoin ATMs have fees lower than the worldwide remittance average of 8.5%

And you were wrong since most bitcoin atms charge 5% per side.

>I am showing you it does. I gave you hard evidence.

Where? You haven't shown any evidence of a comparable service that is actually cheaper.

>No they are not. Do you not understand the market dynamics?

Do you not understand economies of poor towns or that the country receiving the remittances would be a buyers market because of the high sell pressure and low buy pressure causing the spread to be huge?

>A WU competitor who installs a network of Bitcoin ATMs has lower operational costs and overhead than WU

No they don't. They still need someone to watch the ATM and help people use it and it is almost certainly stuck in a store somewhere like every other bitcoin ATM. Hell even the one in Vancouver has to pay someone to sit next to it all day to help people use it and scare off people trying to undercut them.

>Overstock

No we really don't. Bitcoin sales have negatively diverged from their real sales and the divergence is continuing. Even 2 months ago the CEO said on Reddit that bitcoin sales were nothing and he's a huge bitcoin supporter.

Anyhow it's clear we'll never agree and I'm getting bored of going back and forth on the same 2 or 3 points. So I'm going to stop now. Good luck with your investment.


"You gave me an example of someone with a bank account on both sides"

Wrong. I was assuming one side would purchase Bitcoin cheaply on an exchange (eg. the migrant worker in Italy) and the other side (eg. China) would sell on a Bitcoin ATM. So 1% (or less) + 5% of fees which is still less than the 8.5% average of remittances. This is more evidence (again!) that Bitcoin can and does make it cheaper.

"No they don't."

Even banks would disagree with you. Running an ATM (even staffed by one guy sitting next to it) is cheaper than a branch office (which needs employees too). The office has higher costs on all aspects: rent (more square footage), employees (likely more than 1), other utilities, etc.

You look very silly, and alone, to argue that Bitcoin cannot make remittances cheaper. Virtually everybody would disagree with you.

Overstock: come back after they have done 1 year of sales, we will see.




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