Further Bitcoin's wild volatility means that no, you can't send "a few billion dollars" within a "few minutes" for a "few dollars". To send dollars, you first need to pay an exchange a 1% fee to buy BTC, wait a few days for it to clear, pay a BTC transaction fee, wait a few hours for the confirmations, pay the destination exchange a 1% fee, then wait for that to clear. All in you're talking a few dollars, a few days, a few percent and huge volatility risk.
Or, you fire up Interactive Brokers and pay mid-market rates for an exchange with a fee of $20 per million, confirmed instantly. Or TransferWise. Or Western Union (believe it or not they're pretty competitive).
It is true that you need to own BTC to send X dollars, but that is true with regards to any other means - you have to own bank dollars to wire dollars, to get them you have to convert from your local currency or to deposit your "real", cash dollar notes to your bank. And depend on where you are, this may be faster or slower process than converting cash to BTC. Perhaps you are an American and used to have USD available in the banks, consider then having to transfer CHF. There are lots of places where you can buy BTC with cash pretty much immediately. Transferring cash to bank dollars or converting local currency will often take longer and will be more of a hassle. And if you think 1% is bad, try converting currencies at the bank, your credit card or street change places.
Internationally you have TransferWise, it takes a day or two and costs 0.75% and carries no volatility risk. Or IB. Or WU. Or myriad other options, there’s sites to compare rates. Along the USD-INR corridor it’s totally possible to pay 0% with these services.
You’re dramatically understating the cost and risk of a BTC exchange. It’s 2% + $3 + volatility and it moves 10% in days. Or the risk an exchange just goes under with all your money like the guy who lost $400K trying to do Forex in Quadriga.
No idea how it works in CH but the majority of credit cards in the US charge no foreign transaction fees (mid-market rates) and why use a street change place when you can use an ATM in the foreign country for a low fixed dollar fee if any.
If you investigated your options you’d realize this problem is already solved and better.
I didn't understate the risk of BTC exchanges, I didn't discuss it at all. I also didn't and wouldn't claim that BTC is flawless or close to that. There are multiple downsides, risk and usability issues. I only reacted to your claim that it is only useful for illegal ends.
Where, out of curiosity? And is a TransferWise Borderless account an option for you, to sidestep this?
> Street change places are popular because they are the cheapest option. Using SEPA is expensive and is not instant (your bank will usually transmit the transaction about a day after you order it). And anyway, a day or two is far from instant.
TransferWise remains a risk free option less than 1%. SEPA payments cost the same as a domestic transfer, often free, or a few cents, and within the Euro zone there’s no currency to convert. Further they are instant from a network perspective but banks do all offer processing time guarantees. And while potentially far from instant at minimum one SEPA transaction is required to move money into or out of the Eurozone via an exchange so you’re just adding needless extra steps.
> I didn't understate the risk of BTC exchanges, I didn't discuss it at all. I also didn't and wouldn't claim that BTC is flawless or close to that. There are multiple downsides, risk and usability issues. I only reacted to your claim that it is only useful for illegal ends.
By omitting it you made it seem like a viable option, it’s not. The risk was left out of the “couple of dollars” quote like a resort fee at a hotel. There are better, cheaper, faster options. Crypto has no business in the conversation because they’re so clumsy and expensive.
Imo in a market where better options exist, showing up with a worse one by all metrics with no path or plan to improve it doesn’t demonstrate its viability or fitness for purpose. Which means by de facto that this isn’t an example of a legitimate use case. Why would you use a worse product?
For instance it’s like me showing up and saying for $1000 I’ll fly your money personally - with a nontrivial risk I’ll get bored and just keep your money. That doesn’t demonstrate my legitimacy as a money transmitter. Or trying to sell a typewriter as a computer. Or a horse next to a car dealership. Sure you could but why?
First, whatever you’re wiring - isn’t cash pretty much by definition.
Second - why is your default example of paying for illegal product/service is about somebody in a different country on an international sanctions list? How about buying drugs on the street? Doesn’t involve planes and duffel bags of money. Does involve cash.
[1] https://cointelegraph.com/news/iran-recognizes-bitcoin-and-c...
[2] https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/ne...
[3] https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2019/05/03/wall-street-marke...
You keep dodging and dancing around easy and obvious answer - of course yes!
Now the question becomes - why is it so hard for you to admit that cash is being used for illegal purposes?
However, cash is difficult to transact in material quantities due to it's physical volume, the fact you have to defend it, and the fact that few legitimate businesses accept meaningful quantities. If you want to make a larger purchase you have to deposit it into a bank account somewhere and launder it which is when AML/KYC/OFAC come into play.
It's irrelevant to this conversation that cash is being used for illegal purposes, because we're making active attempts to stop that from happening. You're proposing we switch to a technology stack that makes it harder to enforce the law, intentionally, along every axis. That makes this regressive. If that's your argument, own it, but let's not mince words.
And lastly - “let’s ban bitcoin because bad people do bad things” is the same argument as “let’s ban encryption because bad people communicate bad things”.
If you’re for government control of every aspect of your life, if you’re for asking permission to transact or communicate - we just have completely different world views.
Unfortunately there is no middle ground - either you have security or you are backdoored. Either you have financial freedom or you don’t.
Governments should target bad people not genuinely useful tools used by bad people. I don’t care that it’s hard - that’s what I pay taxes for, not to yield control over my life even further.
No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying we shouldn’t advocate a worse solution than what we have today, along every axis. If crypto replaced cash illegal activities would be easier and limited to 7tx/sec (haha, jokes, ish)
To be clear I’m also not proposing banning bitcoin, I’m just proposing not giving it a platform like I would with offensive speech. You’re free to say anything and use bitcoin all you want but that doesn’t mean you’re entitled to a platform to do so.
> If you’re for government control of every aspect of your life, if you’re for asking permission to transact or communicate - we just have completely different world views.
Bitcoin hash power is 80% in the control of 3 mining pools in the PRC who could with the stroke of a pen censor everything. Due to efficiency of scale proof of work always centralizes along the cheapest resources. Going all in on PoW coins is outsourcing control of your sovereign currency to a totalitarian ethnostate but with extra steps. Why not transact in Renminbi and save some electricity? I’ll stick to sovereign management thanks.
> Governments should target bad people not genuinely useful tools used by bad people. I don’t care that it’s hard - that’s what I pay taxes for, not to yield control over my life even further.
Now this is a truly novel argument: make the job of the government harder so you get value for your tax dollars. Even to the detriment of your self and the broader society.
Crypto is actually better than cash on every axis
> limited to 7tx/sec (haha, jokes, ish)
Just shows you’re not very informed on the topic
> Bitcoin hash power is 80% in the control of 3 mining pools in the PRC who could with the stroke of a pen censor everything
Miners don’t control the network so they can’t really censor without consequences. Mining pools are composed of many independent miners, you can’t take over them by taking over pool operator - they will just leave and form another pool.
> Now this is a truly novel argument: make the job of the government harder so you get value for your tax dollars.
Job of government becomes harder/easier due to emergence of new tech not because you or I want it.