THE BITCOINS AND THE UNDERDEVELOPED WORLD

[Yutikas_11920]

I think that Bitcoin is still only at the beginning of its path, and even in developed countries they still do not recognize cryptocurrency. Poorly developed countries do not care about bitcoin, they have more significant problems.

bitcoin is still visible early but you should be able to see how many years bitcoin was created until today bitcoin can still survive and even have a very expensive price, imagine if a country that has economy and technology if it does not use technology such as bitcoin it will not be able to keep up with technology up to now.

[imstillthebest]

I think that Bitcoin is still only at the beginning of its path, and even in developed countries they still do not recognize cryptocurrency. Poorly developed countries do not care about bitcoin, they have more significant problems.

bitcoin is old enough and almost 3/4th's of the population do already recognize bitcoin most especially the developed countries because the people on this country are more knowledgeable  .

Poorly developed countries do not care about bitcoin, they have more significant problems.

thats not true . underdeveloped countries are infact have alot of users because people on this country are looking for oppurtunities to earn and they already discovered that bitcoin can bring wealth  . bitcoin can be thier stepping stone to achieve thier dreams and uplift the status of thier life  .

[RealMalatesta]

@OP

Sorry, but helping the poor was never Bitcoin's main goal, Satoshi never mentioned economic inequality in his whitepaper, and attempts to do so in early days, like airdropping coins to the poor, would only cripple Bitcoin, and we would be where we are now if they were implemented. You can try to spread awareness about Bitcoin among the poor people, but I don't think it's a great idea, for many reasons.

Bitcoin is not a guaranteed way to get rich, in fact it can just as easily wreak you financially - you can invest in the wrong time and than sit in a loss for years, you can panic and make trades at a loss, you can fall victim to scams and hacks and lose your investment. Keep this all in mind before giving financial advice to people, especially those who are vulnerable.

You are very right about virtually everything you said I fully agree with all your point except the first part of your statement, which you said helping the poor was never Bitcoin main goal, it might not be the main goal but it was still out of the pity he had for those who are being exploited by third party financial institutions that made him create a system that will cut all manner of cost in order to save money for these people.

Have you see any big or rich man really complain of charges being slammed on them by government? Because they have enough money to pay whatever little fee all these banks charges them, meanwhile it is quite difficult for any average or poor person to pay.

[sana54210]

There maybe some governments not aware of crypto currencies but almost all the countries people know about it because localitcoin found on almost all the countries.

Even there will be no problem if people didn't aware of it,until there a time comes fiat will have no longer any value.

Even if the whole government of the whole world is aware of cryptocurrency, there is no way that they will uniformly agree to use it as global currency and there is no way it will absolutely replace Fiat no matter how long it stays.

In this world, do you know that we still have some countries that does not even have access to internet, and those are the under developed countries the op is talking about, if they replace fiat completely with cryptocurrency, how do you expect such people to ever survive, how would they make payment for things through a system they are not aware of talk less of knowing how to use it. Crypto can only serve as alternative to Fiat and cannot replace Fiat.

[Mahanton]

There maybe some governments not aware of crypto currencies but almost all the countries people know about it because localitcoin found on almost all the countries.

Even there will be no problem if people didn't aware of it,until there a time comes fiat will have no longer any value.

Even if the whole government of the whole world is aware of cryptocurrency, there is no way that they will uniformly agree to use it as global currency and there is no way it will absolutely replace Fiat no matter how long it stays.

In this world, do you know that we still have some countries that does not even have access to internet, and those are the under developed countries the op is talking about, if they replace fiat completely with cryptocurrency, how do you expect such people to ever survive, how would they make payment for things through a system they are not aware of talk less of knowing how to use it. Crypto can only serve as alternative to Fiat and cannot replace Fiat.

Agree to this fact yet its never ever been possible for fiat to be replaced and lets face up the reality that there are really

remote places that even internet connection cant able to reach it out which it would really be a pretty hard thing for spreading out
the adoption on fully so that's why fiat system would always be the best thing in the end.

[Harlot]

Unfortunately this is a sad reality even if we all have this investment vehicles made available for us not all are interested or knowledgeable with these opportunities may it be because the lack of money to invest with or they are not financially educated. Of course they cannot do it on their own but the best way to trigger the start of it is for the government to be more involve in the situation in which they advocate investments which includes the crypto industry. It's really a win-win situation for everyone since all of them will benefit in that country.

[wozzek23]

               
                                       
                     THE BITCOINS AND THE UNDERDEVELOPED WORLD…THOSE WHO ARE STILL BEHIND

             As time passes bitcoins get more and more interest worldwide, weather sooner or later, it will impact the world economy such that people with no knowledge of it will be left behind. Observing this i can’t keep myself from worrying; what about those who cannot have access to the bitcoins and are not even aware of it existence, this seems surprising but there are much more of people in this situation than people may imagine, those who have never even had access to a computer or worse don’t even have electricity, those people may have access to money though not much but if the bitcoins spread worldwide their situation may only worsen, I am talking of course here of the underdeveloped countries. 
           
             Are my fears wrong? If so what do you think can be done at our level to change something being it even only slightly?
I think this is a problem for all of us even those who don’t feel really concern…

Development is a process, it is not everyone on earth that will ever be exposed to technology, until some generations gradually goes off the face of the earth, satoshi too does not expect everyone to use cryptocurrency, he created it as an alternative which even has limited supply, which is why Fiat will never go off the face of the earth for the sake of those under developed world.

There is nothing much that you and I can do to change this, we will just allow nature to gradually take its course and time passes by. If we are to even try, we have to first eradicated illiteracy completely from the earth, without eradicating illiteracy, there is no way technology can fully take its course for crypto to even spread worldwide.

[bearexin]

               
                                       
                     THE BITCOINS AND THE UNDERDEVELOPED WORLD…THOSE WHO ARE STILL BEHIND

             As time passes bitcoins get more and more interest worldwide, weather sooner or later, it will impact the world economy such that people with no knowledge of it will be left behind. Observing this i can’t keep myself from worrying; what about those who cannot have access to the bitcoins and are not even aware of it existence, this seems surprising but there are much more of people in this situation than people may imagine, those who have never even had access to a computer or worse don’t even have electricity, those people may have access to money though not much but if the bitcoins spread worldwide their situation may only worsen, I am talking of course here of the underdeveloped countries. 
           
             Are my fears wrong? If so what do you think can be done at our level to change something being it even only slightly?
I think this is a problem for all of us even those who don’t feel really concern…

Sometimes when I see people say things like you have said, I just assume that they are very dumb. Okay, I'm sorry for saying that, but what exactly makes you think that developing countries don't have internet? Like it's funny. I have been to most of these countries a lot of times and they have internet and they make use of phones and computers, they have 2G, 3G to 4G network… Like I don't get why anyone would be saying that they don't know anything about internet. They all know about Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, just that it's only few people that knows about it and most of them don't have interest in it. In case you don't know, some Bitcoin companies have even launched in Africa, Luno launched their services to Nigeria and there are other companies that launched in different countries as well. So these people are not really what you think.

[jseverson]

You are very right about virtually everything you said I fully agree with all your point except the first part of your statement, which you said helping the poor was never Bitcoin main goal, it might not be the main goal but it was still out of the pity he had for those who are being exploited by third party financial institutions that made him create a system that will cut all manner of cost in order to save money for these people.

Bitcoin's cost effectiveness was always a secondary consideration. It was just one of those things which happened to work out with Bitcoin's decentralization at the time. Things have changed since, and it's not even always true nowadays anymore with fees surging every now and then. The poor can't afford to wait for fees to go down to spend.

When people say Bitcoin can help the poor, most of them really mean that the poor can hold some and wait for it to appreciate; not for financial inclusion or actual utility. It could still be a cost effective means of transferring large amounts of money, but that use case won't alleviate poverty, just like having access to banking services won't automatically alleviate poverty.

[Dontme]

               
                                       
                     THE BITCOINS AND THE UNDERDEVELOPED WORLD…THOSE WHO ARE STILL BEHIND

             As time passes bitcoins get more and more interest worldwide, weather sooner or later, it will impact the world economy such that people with no knowledge of it will be left behind. Observing this i can’t keep myself from worrying; what about those who cannot have access to the bitcoins and are not even aware of it existence, this seems surprising but there are much more of people in this situation than people may imagine, those who have never even had access to a computer or worse don’t even have electricity, those people may have access to money though not much but if the bitcoins spread worldwide their situation may only worsen, I am talking of course here of the underdeveloped countries. 
           
             Are my fears wrong? If so what do you think can be done at our level to change something being it even only slightly?
I think this is a problem for all of us even those who don’t feel really concern…

Really, most of people in the world do not have internet and does not know bitcoin. Anyway, I don`t think that the government will allow people to suffer because of bitcoin. I`m sure that the world government won`t allow Bitcoin to level up if it will not benefit all people.

[FanEagle]

Another good thing about bitcoin is that it will allow these people from underdeveloped world to gather enough money from the first world countries to actually go live there as well. A whole life change in just one currency.

If you can find a job that is paying you 100 bucks a week that is about 5.2k a year and I know its still not enough to live in a country like USA for example or UK but it would be not that bad to live in an eastern European country for example, still not rich, quite poor but I would rather be poor in a eastern European country like Ukraine then live in a Sudanese village for example. That is why it is always a great thing to bridge people worldwide with bitcoin financially so they can save themselves from the impending forever starvation and just give them a boost.

[binhvo1505]

               
                                       
                     THE BITCOINS AND THE UNDERDEVELOPED WORLD…THOSE WHO ARE STILL BEHIND

             As time passes bitcoins get more and more interest worldwide, weather sooner or later, it will impact the world economy such that people with no knowledge of it will be left behind. Observing this i can’t keep myself from worrying; what about those who cannot have access to the bitcoins and are not even aware of it existence, this seems surprising but there are much more of people in this situation than people may imagine, those who have never even had access to a computer or worse don’t even have electricity, those people may have access to money though not much but if the bitcoins spread worldwide their situation may only worsen, I am talking of course here of the underdeveloped countries. 
           
             Are my fears wrong? If so what do you think can be done at our level to change something being it even only slightly?
I think this is a problem for all of us even those who don’t feel really concern…

No, you are right. You do not worry excess. I feel that using an electronic currency with high technology is unreasonable. now many people in Africa still do not know computers or crypto and many people do not want to use computers.
So far, I have never appreciated the use of this electronic money. it should only be a high-speed money transfer tool, that's what we need. We have fiat money and I think it's great.

[BitHodler]

Bitcoin's cost effectiveness was always a secondary consideration. It was just one of those things which happened to work out with Bitcoin's decentralization at the time. Things have changed since, and it's not even always true nowadays anymore with fees surging every now and then. The poor can't afford to wait for fees to go down to spend.

The main chain fees are definitely not stimulating use in third world countries, but that's what LN is for. Technically speaking you only need to download and install an app and you can instantly receive payments.

It's already possible on a smaller scale right now, but with time it will grow large enough to please the group of people being open to it. I doubt all people will use LN, which just isn't realistic.

Just like there are people who use PayPal, there are people who use other financial institutions that offer a similar service. Competition in the payment industry is extremely tough, and Bitcoin will struggle too.

It's going to be interesting to see how Libra will be adopted when it finally launches. Many people in third world countries do have a Facebook account, so the step to Libra isn't all that hard.

Libra will also enable payments between family members which brokers currently charge 10% of that amount as fee, so we'll see where it goes.

[jseverson]

Bitcoin's cost effectiveness was always a secondary consideration. It was just one of those things which happened to work out with Bitcoin's decentralization at the time. Things have changed since, and it's not even always true nowadays anymore with fees surging every now and then. The poor can't afford to wait for fees to go down to spend.

The main chain fees are definitely not stimulating use in third world countries, but that's what LN is for. Technically speaking you only need to download and install an app and you can instantly receive payments.

It's already possible on a smaller scale right now, but with time it will grow large enough to please the group of people being open to it. I doubt all people will use LN, which just isn't realistic.

You need to pay to open channels though, which may not be ideal for some people. Off chain solutions certainly help, don't get me wrong, but I simply disagree with the notion that Bitcoin was built to help the poor. It can, but Bitcoin is inherently anarcho-capitalist in that it promotes a free market resistant to outside interference, which is far from the socialist expectations of equality some people seem to have.

[fullhdpixel]

I know where your realizations are coming from but you underrated bitcoin and the blockchain technology itself. In reality, there are people who weren't able to afford the internet, mobile phones and other type of access to the internet. However, if our government will make a good step and make a solution to this kind of scenario, they will gonna be a part of this advanced technology by bitcoin.

I bet, you are pertaining of remote areas where in education is not that prioritized. But I am very much optimistic with the future with bitcoin. The only problem here is the adoption of new things, we have to educate those people who are unprivileged enough to go to school on how this digital payments works.

We will definitely get to that age of time where the world population entirely will be part of technology and able to operate it, but that will never happen in our generation. To get to that stage where every blessed souls on earth gets exposed to technology and are able to use it, we will be talking about another 1000 years to come, so we should just forget that everyone will use Bitcoin which is why it becomes not realistic for cryptocurrency to make Fiat usage die off. No matter how much we science try, there will always be under developed worlds, and not even Bitcoin can have solution to their development.

[Cnut237]

There are various projects in crypto to 'bank the unbanked'. Bitcoin at the moment probably isn't the answer as there are smaller, more nimble coins to fill that particular gap.

However the issue here is inequality. A global currency and global government might do something to help, might not. What we can do as individuals is to work to reduce that inequality. Fundamentally it is an inequality of opportunity. I get to buy bitcoin and other cryptos because I am fortunate enough to have been born and live in a rich Western country. I have little doubt that if I'd been born in a poor country, I'd be more concerned about famine, disease and war than about where I could buy crypto.

So what can we as individuals do to help remedy the situation? We can try to vote in governments that will help, but we can also give to charities that will assist people. There are plenty of good ones out there. Personally I use this online charity evaluator so I can make sure my money is going to the best place: https://www.givewell.org

If you want to get involved on a more personal level, there are opportunites to help specific individuals through schemes like this one: https://www.deki.org.uk

Crypto may help in the end, but we don't need to wait for that, we can help right now.

[webtricks]

               
                                       
                     THE BITCOINS AND THE UNDERDEVELOPED WORLD…THOSE WHO ARE STILL BEHIND

             As time passes bitcoins get more and more interest worldwide, weather sooner or later, it will impact the world economy such that people with no knowledge of it will be left behind. Observing this i can’t keep myself from worrying; what about those who cannot have access to the bitcoins and are not even aware of it existence, this seems surprising but there are much more of people in this situation than people may imagine, those who have never even had access to a computer or worse don’t even have electricity, those people may have access to money though not much but if the bitcoins spread worldwide their situation may only worsen, I am talking of course here of the underdeveloped countries. 
           
             Are my fears wrong? If so what do you think can be done at our level to change something being it even only slightly?
I think this is a problem for all of us even those who don’t feel really concern…

So why do you think everyone should have access to Bitcoin?
Bitcoin is no longer poor people's money. Owning Bitcoin has become luxury in 2019. Even 100th fraction of Bitcoin cost $110 nowadays. With increased prices, fees is also sky-rocketing. You have to spend $2-3 atleast to send Bitcoins. No sane person would like to spend $2-3 everytime buying any goods or services. Under all these circumstances, utility of Bitcoin has now been limited to investment only. Now tell me how many poors invest money? They hardly able to fulfill their necessities, why would they invest in something like Bitcoin!
So I really don't see any dire need of introducing everyone to BTC.

[FanEagle]

I don't think the cheap fee is just a secondary good thing that suppose to be just supplementing the decentralized ways. I don't know what satoshi was thinking or what he would have wanted as the creator of the original concept and the first block but in the end I am pretty sure that core team likes the idea of cheap transactions since they have been working on both segwit and lightning network and want to make it as cheap as possible. That is why I honestly believe that we should be focusing on helping them out and making it cheap since if we get to even a higher stage than the prices will become insane once again which would throttle the increase of bitcoin once again and would cause it to drop back in price since people may leave because of it. That is why we should make it as cheap as possible to make the price go higher.

[Indamuck]

Countries like the United States want to keep labor cheap in those countries so as long as the USA remains the dominant military power nothing is likely to change.  Bitcoin won't life those countries out of poverty since very few of the people were ever in a place to own any.

[iMark]

               
                                      
                     THE BITCOINS AND THE UNDERDEVELOPED WORLD…THOSE WHO ARE STILL BEHIND

             As time passes bitcoins get more and more interest worldwide, weather sooner or later, it will impact the world economy such that people with no knowledge of it will be left behind. Observing this i can’t keep myself from worrying; what about those who cannot have access to the bitcoins and are not even aware of it existence, this seems surprising but there are much more of people in this situation than people may imagine, those who have never even had access to a computer or worse don’t even have electricity, those people may have access to money though not much but if the bitcoins spread worldwide their situation may only worsen, I am talking of course here of the underdeveloped countries.  
            
             Are my fears wrong? If so what do you think can be done at our level to change something being it even only slightly?
I think this is a problem for all of us even those who don’t feel really concern…

Worry is a natural thing, and it proves that you still have a sense of empathy for fellow humans. Inequality has been around for a very long time and it has become the main problem of every country that exists, there are people who are very sophisticated but there are people who have never even known about internet, but in the future I see improvements, people are increasingly aware of technology, but the point is to improve the economy in that country, then this imbalance will be resolved