Bitcoin Forum

I think that the BitPay announcement (reducing their staff by a large percentage) is perhaps proof that Bitcoin is not being used by large numbers of people to buy things.

It isn't surprising to me (as I've been pointing out for weeks before this happened) as pretty much no-one is being paid their salary in BTC and the hassle (and fees) to purchase BTC does not make it attractive to then want to go and spend it for usually no discount (as most people allowing BTC payments are using BitPay or the like and do not offer a cheaper selling price - it's just a different payment option).

Sure we have maybe hundreds of ad-sig posters on this forum that earn enough to pay for 1 coffee per month but a new world economy that hardly makes (I really can't see Starbucks franchises being keen to train their staff for a few coffees they might be able to sell per month for BTC).

Until people are being paid in BTC they are simply not going to be using it to buy things (apart from the "early investors" most of which have already bought whatever toys they wanted to already).

What I'd like to see the focus being on is remittance (the main reason why I actually started using Bitcoin back in 2011). Compared to other methods Bitcoin should "kick ass" in this area but unfortunately it has made virtually no impact in a market that is worth billions in profits per year.

agree with all you say

I am pretty staggered the amount of cash being pumped into btc startups that have virtually zero results

seems a lot of people giving themselves fancy titles, like president, vp, coo all this crap and are overseeing bitcoin startups that effectively do nothing but sizzle through tons of cash

another problem is a lot of the people involved have tons of cash in the first instance, lets use the winklevii as examples or the huge queues of corporate investors. they are not HUNGRY. most have priveliged backgrounds

I would love to see some of the very talented people on this very forum take on the mantle. but rather than anything get rich quick or illegal focus on something like remittance
it is a very hard market to get into and will require some infrastructure

have a look at startchat, based for bitcoin and startcoin. so secure messaging AND direct transfer of funds using both cryptos
I think will be huge with enough eyeballs. could go viral
https://twitter.com/start_chat

I have actually some inside knowledge of some new remittance businesses based around the technology (although unfortunately they are not keen to use Bitcoin itself - it seems that Ripple is actually making more inroads now).

As I think this really is the ideal area for Bitcoin I would be willing to offer my help to any serious business wanting to work on getting this happening.

Yes - they take an *obscene* amount of fees from migrant workers (often as high as 30-50% when you are talking small value transfers).

Since the next century will be one of global mass migration I think the remittance market is going to be huge also. However I think BitPay is scaling back to recover the financial loss they suffered from a recent large theft.

They had over 30M in VC funding (from what I had read) so if the loss of 2M causes them to sack nearly everyone then what happened to the other 28M?

If "business was booming" then I very much doubt they would have needed to sack so many employees (and also it wasn't that recent - it happened last year from what I read).

We are seeing a large number of startups with barely any results and various names and it seems that not a lot of people are using bitcoin for buying stuff.When more people adopt bitcoin and use it as a real currency it will for sure mean we are going to see much higher percentage of money coming into the startups.

all these 'banks' and their ponzi schemes make it impossible to start a new bank according their regulations
sue you need to be legal, have good record etc but even someone like Richard Branson couldn't open one in UK
he had to buy an existing failed one

people like WU have a monopoly really, on remittances, for now
but they have been so greedy

any new remittance service for bitcoin or any other crypto would have the initial age old problems.
the app is the easy bit, having the way to buy the crypto and sell it for fiat, which most migrants and those they send to , family, is the tricky bit
still having to use banks, and many are unbanked

so, with 'law enforcement' etc. using entrapment etc. on local bitcoins it is scaring people off using
and really, local bitcoins is bigger in places like US

the places where it's really needed, eastern europe, africa etc doesn't really have a footprint

I think for this to get momentum, it will rely on street traders. the currency changers that are found everywhere you go where they are most trustworthy and cheaper than the banks. ever travel to Ukraine, Myanmar, Thailand, wherever

so if they have apps are are happy to cash out bitcoins when someone sending to them stood next to them this is a way
it's down to whether this is how things move forward

otherwise any app that wants to be a remittance service would need to have some office in these countries, lots of expense, jump through all the leagl hurdles, plus be happy to hold the crypto if price slumps after trading, again, they can use the crypto they hold to trade

Agree that should be definitely the main market to focus on.That is a market of more than $500bn each year. Bitcoin owning a nice piece of that cake would be awesome. But what is hindering us?
I mean we do have some services out there. But it all seems to take way more time and acceptance it seems.

And just to let you know... sig campaigns let you buy several more cup of coffees and not just one per month. ;)

Well - I don't think your coffee purchasing is going to save BitPay is it?

Well it seems some people want to turn Bitcoin into an elitist asset that only rich people would use anyway. I think thats a guaranteed failure. We NEED to both take care of small transactions and huge transactions too. Cash going away is a reality in the following years and we need a solid system to counteract the e-fiat closed source crypto that the gov will drop on us.

a bank could of course. but crypto usurps their business model. all that free cash and qe and charging exhorbitant interest rates on loans, cc on their free money
think about it. WU would be out of business if banks had took on their model, albeit they are hand in hand in some format
add to that banks are wholesale closing branches, globally
plus most of the people needing it are unbanked! so not much use. OR are travellers, students needing emergency money pronto

add to that banks don't like taking gambles. holding crypto they could lose on swings. maybe when they have fully rigged markets then they would partake

crypto is still very much smallfry to them currently
it does however really offer a solution to refugees, migrants sending money home, criminals. ordinary people that want to change system and so on

but, yes, to op, THIS is biggest area that needs addressing. not stock linked exchanges, floats etcetera

But if I were funding this I would certainly not allow the money to be used that way. I would say that the managers have to come up with 2M$. My investment is not to cover losses, it's to facilitate greater profits. A $2 million dollar hole is a radical change to the plan and needs to be fixed before going forward.
I have no specific knowledge of where BitPay is at financially, so I'm just guessing.

Well - with hardly any employees now clearly they aren't expecting a lot of business are they?

(assuming that they can continue with only 10% or so of the staff shows that there can't be much business going on)

In Thailand the infrastructure is ready for bitcoin remittances, here for example:

https://bitcoin.co.th/
https://coins.co.th/

What is missing is information and knowledge about the possibility to use bitcoin.

I think the remittance market need more local exchanges to function. There isn't enough solid exchanges in every country to facilitate a bitcoin remittance network. Government regulations on bitcoin exchanges is a tall hurdle to tackle. Startups cannot "focus on remittance" if local governments are against bitcoin.

if you could spend your bitcoins on "coffee" anywhere, you wouldn't need exchanges or ATM's or any other way to get $$ for BTC.

The hole has been there since late 2014. BitPay has been laying off progressively more employees all year, it's obvious their current woes are not restricted to that theft.

I think all these remittance startups might get a rude awakening when they realise the forest of regulation in every different country that has to be navigated to get properly established.

WU may be a dinosaur but they know their shit inside out.

Maybe we should focus on where Bitcoin succeeds: Dark Web.
http://www.coindesk.com/dark-web-markets-processed-more-bitcoin-than-bitpay-in-2014/
Of course people buy illegal stuffs on Dark Web but they buy and spend BTC!
 

I use Bitcoin for remmittance paying overseas developers. I usually pay into localbitcoins, find somebody local and then enter the worker's details so they are paid directly without ever knowing anything about Bitcoin (because too confusing to explain it to them). This works well for Kenya and other African countries because can just enter their phone number and they are paid directly without needing any other information.

The key is abstracting all the complexity of bitcoin away for people. Trying to explain to grandma back in the home country how to log in somewhere and trade coins with her phone isn't going to happen.

+1

I also use Bitcoin for remittances. It works great indeed. In my case I am able to send to the recipient's bank account for very close to nothing.

If you haven't you may want to look into www.goabra.com they are doing precisely what you suggest at the end.

agree
that's interesting. so avoids street changers like mentioned earlier
having never used localbitcoins are you able to explain more the process you mentioned
as seems pretty seamless

I'm guessing if you use someone with high rating you're pretty safe.
how is the money sent on, what if they don't have bank acocunt

thanks

I remember seeing about these guys years ago. The site looks great and simple, the name is terrible though
do they have any market penetration? are people using them

couple of very recent articles on coindesk are very relevant bearing in mind what we have discussed

http://www.coindesk.com/investment-bank-axa-eyeing-bitcoin-for-remittance-market/

http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-to-cash-app-abra-raises-12-million-series-a/

Many people aren't spending Bitcoin just because there aren't enough places they like which accept it; they're unwilling to go out of their way to patronize places that accept Bitcoin for the fact that they do so. This needs to change. Bitcoiners are being selfish.

I actually have been paid in Bitcoin for at least a year now, though, so this logic has gotten easier for me. If you don't accept Bitcoin, patronizing you is less convenient for me. I have to go find a Bitcoin ATM or exchanger, somewhere. That's annoying, and I end up despising places that only take fiat.

You are probably one of only a handful of people who get paid in Bitcoin (assuming the amount you are paid is more than just a couple of coffees per month).

Expecting everyone to accept BTC as a payment option just because you are paid in BTC when the merchant might only get one such BTC payment per month (or per year) is a little hopeful IMO (although there are actually quite a lot of merchants accepting payments in BTC at the moment).

When there are tens of thousands of people being paid their wages in BTC I'd expect to see a lot more merchants providing a BTC payment option but for the most part I think a lot of merchants have only said "we accept BTC" for the sake of some publicity (rather than any significant amount of sales).

I receive 100% of my income in BTC, which is (obviously) a large enough amount for me to survive. :P Unfortunately, I am forced to convert to fiat when not back at my home base in Vancouver, where there is a large enough concentration of Bitcoin merchants for me to be picky. Converting to fiat requires adjusting my travel route before visiting a place, which is annoying and more effort than should be necessary IMHO.

You're right about the publicity, though. In Vancouver we go out of our way to bring them that, too, and have "a guy" in the local newspaper. However, we all need to try harder to patronize Bitcoin venues. The customers die out once their media frenzy ends; back in the early days, I held all of our Meet Ups at Bitcoin venues, but now there are "Bitcoin centers" everywhere and people wanna Meet Up there, instead. It severely damaged my ability to spread and maintain Bitcoin adoption.

I think the main barrier here towards wide-scale remittance is having over the counter exchanger's shop (actual physical shop in a building) being set up where you can just pops right in and exchange from bitcoin to cash without going through all the crappy procedure. Same goes for atm machine where not only it allows you to buy bitcoin but also sells your bitcoin for cash. Let's accept the ultimate fact here, nobody likes giving away private confidential information and as far as that goes, for me even providing contact telephone number is already considered too much.

Since when was remitting $500 or $1000 a month to folks back home in a third-world country considered elitist?

In fact, buying $5 lattes with your smartphone is a first world phenomena that might actually rank higher than remittances on the elitist scale.

I answered in other topic favoring Bitcoin being used to make small payments and micropayments. I think that it is important to defend this, as it has a lot of monetizing potential for blogs, music, and earning a life by the payment bits of many people.

But I agree that remittance is a very important and not explored area. I have relatives abroad and it would be great to have methods por remmitance involving bitcoin for people who do not know much about using it.

Bitcoin enables all of those things to happen but they don't necessarily have to each individually be settled on the Bitcoin blockchain. That would be an enormous waste of resources.