You confuse money with wealth.
I most definitely do
not. However, an argument was made that a) people in Africa don't have money and b) their use of Bitcoin will drive the price of Bitcoin up, so I pointed out the idiocy of that argument.
Bitcoin value is not going up just because USD and EUR as injected into it, it can also go up if products are denominated in BTC and sold in it.
Yeah, right. And when it drives the price
down instead, people will say that it's because the sellers of products convert BTC to a currency of their choice (like US dollars or whatever else doesn't fluctuate by 5% per day), putting a selling pressure on BTC. Or that the market is manipulated. Or that it's all a secret government plot. Or whatever.
How many slave factories are there in africa where they pay them 10 cent/hour? You know those poor people could do just the same on their own, and get paid in Bitcoins, futhermore they keep all the profits and not share any of it with their slavemaster employers.
Uh-huh. Why don't the slave workers in China do that already? Bitcoin is much more popular there, you know.
I dont know they could just grow vegetables and fruits and sell them inbetween eachother, that could also grow the BTC market cap, it doesnt necesarly have to be FOREX injection.
Lulz. I don't think that you understand what a "market cap" is.
Wealth is the one that drives up prices not money, the fiat currencies are also a representation of wealth. Just as labour, and other work, can create wealth.
This is an interesting hodge-podge of economic theories, some of them right, some of them wrong. Wealth drives prices up - false. Money doesn't drive prices up - true. Currencies (not just fiat) are only a representation of wealth - true. Labor creates wealth - partially true, in the sense that it's only one of the factors.
2) They don't have any electricity - but they do have mobile phones. Must be some model mobile phones from an alternate reality - mobile phones that work with coal and steam.
Have you ever heard of batteries ? Its a great invetion, it makes electricity portable, google it if you dont know what it is.
So, they
do have electricity, only it's portable? Okey-dokey. Of course, a phone battery lasts only a few days (even if the phone isn't used), so they must have easy and convenient way of replacing or recharging them. Recharging them requires electricity. Replacing them requires a store, which also requires electricity.
The USD is in a huge ponzi scheme debt bubble, its days of being a reserve currency are numbered
Lulz. You clearly do not understand what a "reserve currency" means. All competing currencies will fail
first and while nothing lasts forever, you and I might be lucky enough not to live to see it. Well, at least I. I'm considered somewhat old already.
people will need some alternatives
Uh-huh, like something in which they can park 150 freaking trillions worth of US dollars (we are talking "reserve currency", remember?). Alternatives like US dollar-denominated US Treasurys and.... OK, you got me, I can't think of anything else suitable for the purpose.
besides USD transaction comissions are huge, i dont think that poor africans enjoy 10-20 $ comisions, when their daily wage is less than the comission they have to pay.
For international transfers, yes. For day-to-day small exchanges it costs nothing; you only need to have banknotes. Oh, yes, and you need a government that would let you use them.
Yeah like the authorities there will care
Trust me, governments do care, especially when money is involved. It's not like I have millions frozen in Iceland. It's the equivalent of some silly $10k US dollars. (Well, was the equivalent of that when they blocked it; by now inflation should have eaten most of it.) I even hired a lawyer to petition the central bank to allow the transaction, because it's such a small amount. No can do, said the central bank, "it would destabilize the krona". Are you freaking kidding me?! If a currency would be "destabilized" by such a pitiful exchange, it surely isn't very "stable" to begin with, no? But, hey, that's governments to you...
sure they can seize banks and other stuff there ,but BTC is more underground, unless they go house to house and check everyone's phone i highly doubt it.
They can seize the payment processor that accepts BTC, like BitPesa, and I think I already explained to you why direct BTC transactions with poor villagers with no electricity is a phantasy.
5) M-Pesa was successful because all you needed was an SMS-capable phone (and electricity for it, of course). Not a phone that is capable of doing SHA-256, RIPEM-160, ECC and other crap like that.
Who said that it has to contain the blockchain? Just like smartphones do, you create an online wallet and you only need internet.
It's not the blockchain size that is the problem - most mobile phone wallets don't contain it, either. But you still need to do the crypto stuff on the phone, in order to sign your transactions and to verify the incoming ones.
Well for older phones you could use the sms technology to send tokens that will validate the transactions,
Do you even know how M-Pesa works? SMS can't "validate" anything. SMS just tells your "money holder" (who knows your phone number and whom you must trust) "send this amount of money to the account of that phone number".
but all BTC will be stored in some online wallet.
Uh-huh, and then you get
- "We were hacked" (read: the CEO ran away with your money)
- "Government closed us down and took all the money"
- "But Coinbase is tracking my purchases!"
Oh, well, whatever. Keep dreaming.
