Iran can't print paper, guy tells them to use BitCoin

[Ente]

I dont get it. His mother spent USD(!) in such a complicated way for her son to aquire bitcoins? Why didnt he just go buy some on cavirtex.com himself?

In the beginning, the mother in Iran has USD, the student in a far away land has no money.

A couple hours later, the mother does not have the cash, but the student has USD which he can now use to buy his food and pay rent.

Bitcoins were just a part of the conduit bringing the money from the parent to the student, but can you think of another way to get money transfered so quickly?

Not just quickly, but cheaply, and the entire process avoided all banks except for the hawala guy in the unnamed country who deposited local money to the exchange. Iranian students here told me the only way to get money out of Iran is physically flying it out of the country or paying huge fees to these same hawala guys to send a wire transfers overseas, but they won't do it for less than $5k and giant fees so anything smaller is just not getting out. In this situation the guy here received $2500 CAD worth of coins and only paid $20 or so in middle man fees which I was shocked, thought it would cost a lot more

The guy who bought them here just paid regular gox spot price for them, I didn't ask what he wanted $2500 worth of bitcoins for but I'm assuming it has something to do with importing psychedelics off SR to sell on campus, so it was win all around: Iranian student can eat, the rest of us get some quality dutch acid

Now that's a huge sucess story! Bitcoin really shows how to shine here!

Which gave me an idea: how about "bitcoinsucess.com" or "bitcoinstories.com" or simply a blog, where such case studies are collected? One central place to combine efforts! Then we only need those translated in a few languages and point all students, families, everyone there!
20$ total fees on a 2500$ transfer? In a matter of hours? Around shady governmental embargos? YEEEHAW!
*activate viral avalanche mode*

Ente

[1713929434]

1713929434

[Sukrim]

I think the biggest problem for bitcoin in Iran is, that the people cant get rid of their Rials.

where bitcoins are used for remittance transfers to family members back home, then the recipient would be looking for rials.

Are you sure? I guess a 100 USD bill would be more in demand in Iran than the same amount in Rial...

However, the same could hold true for BTC.

[molecular]

If you promise not to tell anybody (lol, derp)  the first confirmed transaction of paying cash in Tehran and receiving Bitcoins across the world worked out pretty good. A student last night on my campus called his mother in Iran to go to a local currency exchange and give the guy behind the counter USD and emailed instructions how to load an unnamed foreign bitcoin exchange (instructions provided by me, translated by the student). Currency guy in Tehran phoned his hawala network partner, as apparently they all have foreign partners, in that bitcoin exchange's country who bought the coins on their behalf and withdrew them directly to the student's wallet address in Canada (for a really awesome rate too, damn these shady currency hustlers are even savvy in the virtual money world)

Said student then turned around and sold them for cash in hand to a guy on campus using localbitcoin in just 1hr after his family paid in Tehran, which is a pretty awesome fast transfer from a country with zero money transmitting abilities and for a hawala guy who had no idea what bitcoin was but managed to fund and buy the coins anyways, and withdraw them to the correct wallet address. Word spread and now every Iranian student on campus is getting their family to go to this one store to get coins, and a girl told me the store maxed out the 24hr exchange limit before lunch just dealing with the few student's family members on my campus. There's serious potential in Iran. Now the student here has money for rent instead of wondering where the hell he was going to sleep in a month since our country cut off incoming transfers even from family members.

wow, this is pretty cool.

I bet the cost was pretty high?

I bet the cost will fall with time as word gets around and usage picks up. Also: this spreads the word

awesome!

[Spekulatius]

I dont get it. His mother spent USD(!) in such a complicated way for her son to aquire bitcoins? Why didnt he just go buy some on cavirtex.com himself?

In the beginning, the mother in Iran has USD, the student in a far away land has no money.

A couple hours later, the mother does not have the cash, but the student has USD which he can now use to buy his food and pay rent.

Bitcoins were just a part of the conduit bringing the money from the parent to the student, but can you think of another way to get money transfered so quickly?

Not just quickly, but cheaply, and the entire process avoided all banks except for the hawala guy in the unnamed country who deposited local money to the exchange. Iranian students here told me the only way to get money out of Iran is physically flying it out of the country or paying huge fees to these same hawala guys to send a wire transfers overseas, but they won't do it for less than $5k and giant fees so anything smaller is just not getting out. In this situation the guy here received $2500 CAD worth of coins and only paid $20 or so in middle man fees which I was shocked, thought it would cost a lot more

The guy who bought them here just paid regular gox spot price for them, I didn't ask what he wanted $2500 worth of bitcoins for but I'm assuming it has something to do with importing psychedelics off SR to sell on campus, so it was win all around: Iranian student can eat, the rest of us get some quality dutch acid

Now that's a huge sucess story! Bitcoin really shows how to shine here!

Which gave me an idea: how about "bitcoinsucess.com" or "bitcoinstories.com" or simply a blog, where such case studies are collected? One central place to combine efforts! Then we only need those translated in a few languages and point all students, families, everyone there!
20$ total fees on a 2500$ transfer? In a matter of hours? Around shady governmental embargos? YEEEHAW!
*activate viral avalanche mode*

Ente

Nice idea! What you describe seems more geared towards journalists to put into their stories, describing usecases of bitcoin.
To show Iranians and citizens from other countries how to aquire/use/sell bitcoins maybe http://howdoyoubuybitcoins.com/ cuts straighter to the core. Unortunately they think that they are kept from providing such information due to US sanctions (http://howdoyoubuybitcoins.com/Iran) If anybody wants to help Iranians to use bitcoins, make an article somewhere else and link it or mirror the site somewhere outside the US!

[Arto]

To show Iranians and citizens from other countries how to aquire/use/sell bitcoins maybe http://howdoyoubuybitcoins.com/ cuts straighter to the core. Unortunately they think that they are kept from providing such information due to US sanctions (http://howdoyoubuybitcoins.com/Iran) If anybody wants to help Iranians to use bitcoins, make an article somewhere else and link it or mirror the site somewhere outside the US!

You probably meant to link to: http://howdoyoubuybitcoins.com/iran.html

There is also a Reddit thread at: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/11sypf/5btc_bounty_how_do_you_buy_bitcoins_in_iran/

[moni3z]

If you promise not to tell anybody (lol, derp)  the first confirmed transaction of paying cash in Tehran and receiving Bitcoins across the world worked out pretty good. A student last night on my campus called his mother in Iran to go to a local currency exchange and give the guy behind the counter USD and emailed instructions how to load an unnamed foreign bitcoin exchange (instructions provided by me, translated by the student). Currency guy in Tehran phoned his hawala network partner, as apparently they all have foreign partners, in that bitcoin exchange's country who bought the coins on their behalf and withdrew them directly to the student's wallet address in Canada (for a really awesome rate too, damn these shady currency hustlers are even savvy in the virtual money world)

Said student then turned around and sold them for cash in hand to a guy on campus using localbitcoin in just 1hr after his family paid in Tehran, which is a pretty awesome fast transfer from a country with zero money transmitting abilities and for a hawala guy who had no idea what bitcoin was but managed to fund and buy the coins anyways, and withdraw them to the correct wallet address. Word spread and now every Iranian student on campus is getting their family to go to this one store to get coins, and a girl told me the store maxed out the 24hr exchange limit before lunch just dealing with the few student's family members on my campus. There's serious potential in Iran. Now the student here has money for rent instead of wondering where the hell he was going to sleep in a month since our country cut off incoming transfers even from family members.

wow, this is pretty cool.

I bet the cost was pretty high?

I bet the cost will fall with time as word gets around and usage picks up. Also: this spreads the word

awesome!

It worked out to $20 total in fees.. but this was because the trader bought them at a good rate and the guy here paid gox spot rate so swallowed the roughly $60 in fees hawala guys charged. Thanks speculation

Didn't even know there were ppl in Tehran on localbitcoins selling for Euros will try them next time

[jackmaninov]

Any way you could get your hands on the Farsi translation of the instructions and post them here? I have some Iranian friends in Canada that are basically in the same boat that I'd like to give a hand to.

[molecular]

It worked out to $20 total in fees.. but this was because the trader bought them at a good rate and the guy here paid gox spot rate so swallowed the roughly $60 in fees hawala guys charged. Thanks speculation

Didn't even know there were ppl in Tehran on localbitcoins selling for Euros will try them next time

hehe. There was some luck involved, but <1% combined fee sounds awesome

[niko]

All that's needed is a large mining operation in Iran.

[scrybe]

The sanctions against Iran are more of a speculation and political pressure anyway. World needs Iranian oil and other products. For some countries it is like going to hunger strike to make a shop owner lose customers lol. When Iran will get the nukes the attitude will be wholly different. Take a example of Russia doing all kinds of evil things in home and abroad. No sanctions against Russia at all.

Russia is a member of the security council at the UN. If not for this permanent veto power we would see sanctions being considered and/or enacted on Russia. Same with China.

Did you think the 1% principle only applied to people?

Iran is not on the council, so the bar is much lower to get folks to agree to pressuring them. This is part of the reason why we see sanctions against Iran but not Russia or China.
(they are also already part of the "Nuclear Club" that are allowed by international law to possess nuclear devices, and they have a self interest in not allowing Iran to join this club, so they will go along even when there is good business selling non-competitive or knock-off equipment, or arms to them.)

Edit, updated for clarity

[molecular]

The sanctions against Iran are more of a speculation and political pressure anyway. World needs Iranian oil and other products. For some countries it is like going to hunger strike to make a shop owner lose customers lol. When Iran will get the nukes the attitude will be wholly different. Take a example of Russia doing all kinds of evil things in home and abroad. No sanctions against Russia at all.

Russia is a member of the security council at the UN. If not for this permanent veto power we would see sanctions being considered and/or enacted. Same with China.

Did you think the 1% principle only applied to people?

afaik there are sanctions in effect since early this year:

The European Union has imposed restrictions on cooperation with Iran in foreign trade, financial services, energy sectors and technologies, and banned the provision of insurance and reinsurance by insurers in member states to Iran and Iranian-owned companies.[2] On 23 January 2012, the EU agreed to an oil embargo on Iran, effective from July, and to freeze the assets of Iran's central bank.[3] The next month, Iran symbolically pre-empted the embargo by ceasing sales to Britain and France (both countries had already almost eliminated their reliance on Iranian oil, and Europe as a whole had nearly halved its Iranian imports), though some Iranian politicians called for an immediate sales halt to all EU states, so as to hurt countries like Greece, Spain and Italy who were yet to find alternative sources.[4][5]
On 17 March 2012, all Iranian banks identified as institutions in breach of EU sanctions were disconnected from the SWIFT, the world's hub of electronic financial transactions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_sanctions_against_Iran

[moni3z]

Any way you could get your hands on the Farsi translation of the instructions and post them here? I have some Iranian friends in Canada that are basically in the same boat that I'd like to give a hand to.

I can't because that would give away what non-Iranian exchanger they used who could possibly be scrutinized by sanctions enforcing secret police https://localbitcoins.com/country/IR would be easier than what I did, I assumed there wouldn't be any listings there and didn't check.

The currency traders my friend's family in Iran talked to said they could get money into a list of  countries all with different fees. Fees for cash into Thailand was 8%, fees for cash into Ukraine 5%, the UK was insane fees something like 25% and Malaysia, Russia and China were also options. Typically more fees are then charged to wire the money from those countries to family members in Canada and US which obscures the origin being Iran but they didn't charge anything extra to buy something local, like meeting some guy in Bangkok from localbitcoins site to buy coins or buying codes from an ATM in Russia to fund an exchange.

After I figured out what was the cheapest and easiest method I wrote step-by step instructions "Go to the Derpa Credit Union on Hakalakadaka St in Cairo, deposit cash for this account" and had my friend here translate it into Farsi and email it back home for his family to bring in and show the currency store guy. He takes money, calls his cousin or brother in the country you want, transaction is done immediately. Sort of bitinstant Iran version

Out of paranoia I also had the hawala guys buy and send the coins to us, which you obviously don't need to do you can just get them to fund an exchange and sign in yourself and do it.

[Stephen Gornick]

I see a post describing an exchange, Coinava, now in Iran:

 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=256445.0