Re:Ask HN: What was impossible earlier that is easy in the B...
by hudon on Friday June 30, 2017 @01:46PM
(#14672397)
Remittances have been shown to not actually be better with bitcoin. [1] [2] [3].
I can send 2000 USD to India using TransferWise and they will only charge me 17.84 USD. That is a 0.89% fee using a reliable mechanism and I know my recipient will have their native currency in their bank account within a couple business days. Compare that with opening an account on a US bitcoin exchange, sending money there (time delay), buying bitcoin (exchange fee), opening an account in india (requires verification and linking a bank account), sending the bitcoin over (time delay), converting the bitcoin to rupees (time delay, exchange fee, volatility risk), then sending the money to the bank (another time delay).
[1] https://medium.com/cryptonight/bitcoin-doesn-t-make-remittan...
[2] https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/rebittance-startups-agr...
My US credit cards work well in most of the world if I want to buy from some kinds of business (ex. use a chip card to pay for gas, hotel, groceries, restaurant meals, etc. in Canada.)
If I want to send money to a bank account elsewhere in the world my credit union charges about $40, and most other banks charge about the same. This is not so bad if you need to move $100,000 but the fee is too much to move $100.
Bitcoin is not as fast as swiping a credit time but bitcoin and a wire transfer are on the same scale, and even if you pay a $5 miner's fee on a transaction that beats the wire transfer.