TESLA & BTC

[VicBee]

https://decrypt.co/71360/crypto-market-crash-bitcoin-ethereum-plummet

Says all about crypto inability to withstand anymore than good old currencies.

 

[mokwit]

Ok, let's think about this for a second. So we consume as much energy as the country of Netherlands to provide instant transfers and real-time banking to 8 billion people on the planet with a mobile phone in their pocket, many of which have never had a bank account in their lives and are still storing cash under their mattresses. And in many cases, that's cash that is losing value over time. Sound like a damn good trade to me.

This is a US held belief that there all these people with no bank account in the developing word who are using Bitcoin like a currency coz they can't get a bank account. I live in an officially developing country in Asia. There is no problem getting a bank account and a debit card. The interest in Bitcoin is for speculation by the 2 car 3 bedroom house level people. Puhhuuleeze, stop buying the snake oil Bitcoin pitch.

You can transfer money anywhere in the world from pretty much anywhere in the world using the Indian Hwala system or the Chinese Phoy Kuan system. Phuuhuhuleeze.

 

[Baron]

I live in an officially developing country in Asia. There is no problem getting a bank account and a debit card.

Since you can open a bank account in your country, you're saying it must also be like that in every other country?

 

[Pekelo]

"Bitcoin Average Transaction Fee is at a current level of 17.16, down from 22.55 yesterday and up from 6.152 one year ago. "

Money of the future. I can see those poor Africans buying food and paying $10+ bucks as transaction fees.

Interesting to note but 1 BTC =/= 1 BTC because of this high tx fee.

Getting back to topic, in this regard Elon is right to back Doge, it is much faster and cheaper to transfer money with Doge.

 

[mokwit]

Since you can open a bank account in your country, you're saying it must also be like that in every other country?

I was using the country I live in as an example.

OK, tell me which countries someone who is at the level where he has a smartphone and access to the internet can't open a bank account.

 

[mlawson71]

Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk backed a new Bitcoin Mining Council created by major American Bitcoin miners in an effort to improve the energy efficiency of the digital currency, often criticized for using too much electricity generated by coal for the purpose of mining.

“Spoke with North American Bitcoin miners. They committed to publish current and planned renewable usage and to ask miners worldwide to do so. Potentially promising”, Musk tweeted after the meeting, which aims to “promote energy usage transparency” and encourage bitcoin miners to use renewable energy instead of coal generated one.

What do you think is this genuine or just a PR effort?

 

[VicBee]

I was using the country I live in as an example.

OK, tell me which countries someone who is at the level where he has a smartphone and access to the internet can't open a bank account.

I think the point is, if you cannot open a basic bank account today in any country of the world, you're so poor that you can't even open an account and thus bitcoin is irrelevant .

 

[Baron]

OK, tell me which countries someone who is at the level where he has a smartphone and access to the internet can't open a bank account.

Well, oddly enough, the two countries you mentioned as having money transfer services... China and India... also happen to have the highest unbanked population in the world:

"Because account ownership is nearly universal in high-income economies, virtually all unbanked adults live in developing economies. China and India, despite having relatively high account ownership, claim large shares of the global unbanked population because of their sheer size. Home to 225 million adults without an account, China has the world’s largest unbanked population, followed by India (190 million), Pakistan (100 million), and Indonesia (95 million) (map 2.1). Indeed, these four economies, together with three others—Nigeria, Mexico, and Bangladesh—are home to nearly half the world’s unbanked population (figure 2.1)."

And if you'd like to see all the countries that have people people walking around with cell phones but have significant unbanked populations, have a look at this map:

 

[VicBee]

Anyone can own a phone in China and India. But the poverty level for those who don't have bank accounts is such that Bitcoin is fully irrelevant to them.

 

[mokwit]

Baron. you run a great site and you run it well, but as someone who has been on the ground in Asia since 1995 and was an analyst covering telecoms and internet, your argument comes across as the argument of someone sitting in America reading a pitch. I looked at things like population, cost dynamics, affordability, per capita GDP growth/income distribution.

Have you ever met with the CEO of an Indian Bank or Indonesian Bank? I have.

If people are unbanked it is because it is not viable to put a bank branch where they live. In Brazil remote populations have been served by bank branches using VSAT for decades - you can have an ATM linked by VSAT. Likewise if there is no cellular coverage. Bitcoin is seemingly non viable for micro payments.

Do you really think these people who are unbanked are all going to embrace Bitcoin?. Have you ever met people from the hinterlands of a developing country? How tech savvy do you think they are? You will probably find the unbanked are older people - not really a group that takes up new ideas/technologies - the young do.

The Bitcoin pitch machine picks a few basket case dysfunctional countries like Nigeria or a town in El Salvador and holds this up as how it will be for the rest of the world.