Bitcoin Forum

There are lots of metrics in favour of Bitcoin like the one in Forbes that said the black market is worth 10 trillion dollars and they need a global currency or if only 1% of global transactions went though Bitcoin each coin would be worth ~$64,000.

But this is my favourite:

80% of the worlds population do not have a bank account.

Thats 5.6 Billion people on earth do not have a bank account, let alone a credit card.

20 Million adults in the U.S don't have bank accounts.
1 Million adults in the U.K don't have bank accounts.



 

And how many smartphone users are there again?

~Bruno~

http://www.quora.com/How-many-smartphone-users-are-there-worldwide

Therefore, the Bitcoin niche user would be a smartphone owner that doesn't have a bank account. And that number is? (I remember seeing that somewhere, but would be great to read it again in this informative thread)

~Bruno~

Liking the first stat, but yeah as the others said about your second stat. If they don't have a bank account, they're probably too poor to afford a computer or a smartphone to even use bitcoin.

Bit of a shame really. Fiat money will always be more accessible to these people than bitcoin.

Out of interest, how big is silkroad these days? Still growing in userbase and listings?

FTFY

I'll take this convo back to a past convo related to M-PESA.  If someone can get bitcoins to where they can be "texted" then you might be able to compete and even give some lower fees than this existing 15 million user base system of texting to pay your grocery bill (and any other store/person) in Kenya.

I'm pretty sure something like this may be in development or already exist, but if that picks up and saves some fees, then we could start cracking into those non banked market share.

Correct: http://mobilemoneyafrica.com/category/news/south-africa/page/2/

ABSA (Barclays) bank is/has implemented this in Africa. The concept is Mobile Banking whereby your bank account is linked to your mobile phone and small payments can be sent quickly and easily within existing infrastructure.

http://mashable.com/2012/03/21/bitcoin-africa/

I hadn't seen this yet.  It was written about a month ago. 

German software developer Rüdiger Koch, a consultant to the U.K.-based bitcoin exchange Intersango, recently traveled to speak at the Mobile Money Africa event in Lagos, Nigeria.

Woot!  I hope this takes off, cuz that's exactly the critical mass we need to have this become global!

From that article
WTF are they talking about? MtGox closed?  Or is it desinformation? They can't be talking about TradeHill, at least not on those terms lol

oops, just saw people already corrected them on the comments, namely evoorhees.

Ya, I almost started hating on it as well, but if you ignore that one misinfo, the rest is frickin awesome.

Everyone makes mistakes... I'm sure reporters do it too.  They should have hired a bitcoin consultant *cough, me!* to review it for them...

haha

¹- Confirmed
²- Confirmed by personal experience :P

Central Banks are screwing themselves.

"Providing financial services to the 2.5 billion people who are 'unbanked' could boost economic growth and opportunity for the world's poor," says World Bank Group President Robert B. Zoellick.

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/04/19/business/poor-bank-accounts/index.html?hpt=hp_t3 (http://edition.cnn.com/2012/04/19/business/poor-bank-accounts/index.html?hpt=hp_t3)

This isn't the key number.

We're talking about bitcoins future so we should consider the trickle down of technology.  Just as the poorer parts of the world are now using mobile phones that the rich parts were using 10 years ago; so too in ten years the poorer parts of the world will be using the smart phones that the rich parts are using now.

The key question then is "how many mobile phone users are there worldwide"?

http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-500395_162-6209772.html

4.6 billion seems to be the answer.  1 billion of whom already have smartphones.

Regardless of whether they have bank accounts or not -- they are bitcoin's potential market.  Or will become so as smartphone technology finds its way into their hands.

For reference, I have spent a lot of time in Thailand and even learning the Thai language.  If you wander around you'll find lots of poverty and homeless.  However what is amazing is that every single one of them has a cell-phone!  Even when we went out to the middle of nowhere in a desert area with little huts/tents.  I didn't see any electricity hookups, but they all had cellphones.   I have no idea how they even charge them!  One of them using it to play music on speakerphone.   But I don't know if they have service plans with those phones... maybe they just play games an music with them?  Seems unlikely.

Wiki has a list of cellphone ownership rates (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_mobile_phones_in_use), showing Thailand with 105% ownership.  From looking at the list, there's actually quite a few such countries, and some of them are places that have high poverty rates, and likely low bank-account-owning rates.  So contrary to some of the replies to this thread, I think there are quite a few places where Bitcoin on the phone can really catch on.  Only problem with Thailand is that their currency has almost an identical symbol :-\

Damn! We are screwed.

What makes you think that all the people on the black market would switch to bitcoins, if only people doing illegal things used bitcoins? The only entry points into BTC are the exchanges or mining, and if 90% of btc traffic was illegal stuff, the exchanges at least would be under massive scrutiny.

Isn't it also far more advantageous to have a currency you can actually spend in useful ways? If all you could get by selling weapons was btc, and you could only buy other weapons for btc...would anyone bother with btc? There's no non-weapon profit to be had, whereas there is tons if you go via USD.

It doesn't make sense to expect or rely on the idea that an exclusive use of bitcoins by the black market would make a bitcoin extremely valuable. If everyone in the world accepted bitcoins for goods/services, then they might add demand if they can use it almost anonymously.

The world bank isnt Bitcoin in their interest?

Should they not invest in Bitcoin?
 

When they are done with their feeding frenzy of debt-based financial instruments, Bitcoin will be their wafer thin mint.

https://encrypted-tbn3.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQVwRiF9VqufOf1LS8_ga13Pwk23AF9tjjo_VHupwq86vGEa4Hv

Cross border transfers.

According to wikipedia remittance alone is more than 250 billion $:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remittance

If 1/1000 part of that was temporarily stored in BTC the exchange rate would approach 28$/BTC even if all other BTC markets and current BTC value was 0.

Using other services sending costs around 15% (WU) - with BTC 0%.

Go ahead and add business transfer and tax avoidance amounts to that...

Have you recently tried to send money to an individual in another country?  The form is bigger than applying for a passport. Two proofs of ID, proof of address and so on,,, and your not even asking for a loan, your just trying to send $100 of your own money to somebody.

"black market" probably loses about 20% of its revenue just moving money around.

Because the banksters won't allow good things to happen first with bitcoin.
The fact is its still quite hard to buy bitcoins without having to wire money and wait a couple of days for funds to clear.

Yeah exactly, there is a choke point into getting BTC. If 99% of BTC commerce is illegal (and all law enforcement agencies around the world knew this), and there is a record of fiat transfer to the exchanges (mtgox verification), then who would be idiotic enough to use BTC for illegal purchases?

So what your saying is that its the Bitcoin community that is doing "God's Work."   Not Lloyd Blankfein?

that should be our new slogan.

Bitcoin is nothing short of miraculous at a time when we need it. Maybe it is "God's Work."