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April 01, 2018, 01:16:43 PM |
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The Philippines, with a population of over 100 million, is currently served by two major local bitcoin exchange businesses; coins.ph and BuyBitcoin. Both appear to be well operated, economical, and offer normal exchange services as well as some value-added services. When exchanging bitcoin into PHP, both offer bank deposits (free) and pick-up through pera padala businesses (for fee a little above what they are charged by the para padala business).
For the short-term future, I see the main use of bitcoin in the Philippines to be for remittances into and out of the country. Intra-country use will not develop until the Filipino can see an advantage in its use over cash.
It's true that most of the businesses that accept bitcoin are only distributed along the confines of the metros. Also, slow internet connection with such a ludicrous fee (I'm paying $50 for a 3Mbps turtle) is another hurdle when it comes to using bitcoin, given that the network runs through the internet. SMS, on the other hand, is very active within the Filipinos. If only they can make a wallet SMS-ready or transactions can be made through SMS, many Filipinos would consider using bitcoins as well. Also, the main thing that I see people here would use bitcoins is mainly for remittances. I experienced one time when my uncle sent money from Canada to Manila, it took 2 days for the process to complete (which is nuts, because I need the money that same day), whereas in bitcoin, you don't need to wait for that long because transactions are made within a span of minutes from anywhere in the world. That's a +1 for me because I have relatives in other parts of the world that often send money to us.
Exchanges here on the other hand, do little promotion and advertising. Coins.ph do the same promotion in Facebook among others, and tbh, coins.ph is a nice exchange because they really deliver their customers' needs. They also have great customer service that replies instantly and helps you with your problems. Some other exchanges, I'm not familiar with, but I haven't heard a single time in which they do some shit over their customers.
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