My friend's Russian father lived in Serbia with his mother when he was a young child. He was entitled to a wage in rubles - he was employed by the Russian government - and he had a nice little triangle going. The Russians had pegged the ruble to the US dollar (or close enough) to avoid looking weak, so the ruble was artificially inflated. Yugoslavia didn't do that, so it had a much weaker currency. He would make his paycheck go ruble > USD > yugoslav currency (can't recall the name) and he made quite a bit of 'free' money that way.
For things like these Hawala systems are existing ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala ). Really a great tool to cut out banks and government control in financial transactions. I wish this somewhat would find its way into the digital age.
Re:Mt. Gox Dwolla account frozen by DHS
by cynicalkane on Tuesday May 14, 2013 @09:57PM
(#5709700)
Yes, and almost all Minneapolis banks will refuse to do business with the hawalas, and hawalas have to move money, and they are also subject to US regulations.
I'm not making up issues, you know. Inability to move money to Somalia is a real thing. Here's one link: http://www.startribune.com/local/minneapolis/136396028.html
Ripple [0] has some similarities to a digital Hawala system.
[0] - https://ripple.com/
There doesn't seem to be any information about who's behind this? I can see OpenCoin Inc but their site seems to be down. HN effect at work perhaps?
Ripple is run by Jed McCaleb, founder of Mt.Gox, and Chris Larsen, founder of Prosper.com.
Interesting project. Has it got any traction?
Ever tried to send money to Somalia? If you think that's a silly question, there are a lot of Somalians here in Minneapolis who would like to feed their families back home (and a lot of banks who would like to make money by helping out). But politics makes that very, very hard. This is just one example.