You don’t use them because they are inferior to other products and services. “Good” is irrelevant.
Bitcoin ATMs will always be more expensive, more difficult to use, and in less convenient locations than the traditional banking system. Bitcoin is shit for remittances because it requires that point of presence and staffing, Western Union can do all of that cheaper.
DarkNet Markets.
Sometimes. In most cases I don’t use them because I don’t need them at the given moment/context.
They are good. They threaten the traditional system, forcing it potentially to suck less.
Cheaper? Did you see the fees? Highway robbery it is.
WU also requires staffing, while BT ATMs can be automated and just filled with cash like regular ATMs. People are Expensive to keep.
For remittances, where there are relatively constant social networks running at both the sending and receiving places, and there are compatible merchants there, hawala is often the best choice anyway.
Thanks. Wikipedia disambiguation page updated.
The fees are not better for end-to-end transfers with Bitcoin, where CURRENCY CONVERSION is required. People needing international remittances don’t want Bitcoin. They want their local currency.
Again, the only gains would be if people wanted Bitcoin. Which they don’t.
Which is to say, you don’t. Maybe not even anybody you know, yet. To call BTC a developing technology is tautological.
According to this article, the fees are about 0.1 to 0.5 percents.
According to Western Union fee estimator, a sample transfer of $100 from USA to Germany incurred $8 fee for the Direct-to-Bank that takes 3 business days, or $12 for the Money-in-Minutes service that is virtually immediate. This is in the rough ballpark of what I experienced with those thieves when sending money to a friend in need within Europe.
So if we count 0.5% fee on each BTC conversion, we get a 1% fee, while with WU we get 8 to 12% fee.
Myth #1 busted.
The volumes traded on the exchanges suggest that a significant number of people want Bitcoin.
According to the earlier article, for example the Bitfinex exchange, in Februrary, had trading volume of 1,557,657 BTC over 30 days before. Assuming today’s exchange rate of about 227USD/1BTC, this is 3.53×108 USD. Traded over 30 days.
The graph of total volume transactions, for 7 day average, is here.
Myth #2 busted.
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