Someone today made the comparison of BitCoin to Hawala:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala I'd actually never heard of Hawala before so my knowledge of it does not extend any further than that wikipedia article goes. So, I'm curious to know if you think -- is that comparison is accurate? Why or why not?
The difference between BItcoin and Hawala is that a Bitcoin money exchanger can operate indepedently.
A hawalder in the remittance destination country is of no use without a relationship with the hawalder partner in the sender's country. Also the two hawalders must trust each other as eventual settlement may not happen until a later time.
Bitcoin cuts the need for there to be any tie between the two sides.
I'm wondering how long it will take current hawalders to figure out they can use bitcoin to do deals on their own. Bitcoins don't yet have much value for the beneficiary of a remittance transfer -- the recipient will likely be just looking for a way to convert the coins to the local fiat currency. But to an enterprising hawalder, acquiring and holding larger amounts of bitcoins becomes useful for paying for purchases made abroad or for sale to a local investor perhaps.
Also, a hawalder has lower costs than the formal, licensed money exchangers.
Compare the difference between Bitcoin and a Western Union.
A WU agent location needs lots of volume to pay for the overhead. But a Bitcoin-friendly hawalder or any other individual who provides a Bitcoin cash-out method can be profitable on every trade, even if only doing one or two exchanges per day.
It doesn't need to be a full time operation or need to start out as an intentional part-time gig even. There no doubt are individuals who have a little extra time and a little extra money that will do this exchange "as a favor" to be able to earn the 5% or 10% that doing such an exchange can bring.
And then word gets out and in the following weeks there are two recipients who need this favor. And then it is four, then eight, and pretty soon this individual now has this sideline business doing bitcoin cash-out service.
Also, then consider how basic business sense starts to take over. If I am offering a Bitcoin cash-out service to you, and you turn around and use that cash to pay for your mobile phone refill, then why don't I just start selling to you mobile phone refills for bitcoins, and earn the profit from that sale as well?
So essentially, there already exists entrepreneurial Bitcoin hawalders. Here's a list of hundreds of them in several hundred cities around the world:
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https://localbitcoins.com/statistics
