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Bitcoin's comeback: should Western Union be afraid?

arstechnica.com

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Re: Bitcoin's comeback: should Western Union be afraid?

#71

Post by jbm »

Smirnoff wrote: post #57

Western Union (Business Services) employee here. I disagree with the author on many levels: 1. Government regulations. Wire transfer industry is a HIGHLY regulated industry. There is no way BitCoin will be able to operate without complying with AML (AntiMoney Laundering) and AntiTerrorist regulations. Many names/countries/organizations are on OFAC list. Thus, the minute you transfer a wire to Mohammad or to someone i…

I'm guessing you didn't meant to come off as bigoted but I have a lot of friends named Mohammad, none of whom have any legal issues, nor are any of them members of terrorist organizations. If the attitude towards me sending money to one of them for any number of legitimate reasons is baseless suspicion, maybe many people like me will wind up looking for alternatives - like bitcoin.

At the expense of karma, allow me to add that in an odious legal atmosphere where prosecutors consider photographing chicken coops as terrorism, it won't just be people with funny terrorist-sounding names winding up using Bitcoin.

Re: Bitcoin's comeback: should Western Union be afraid?

#72

Post by dasil003 »

omarchowdhury wrote: post #43
georgemcbay wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The one thing that Bitcoin really excels at is the instantaneous transfer of unlimited amounts of money from one place in the world to another." I'm being somewhat pedantic here but Bitcoin is absolutely terrible at this, because Bitcoins are inherently not unlimited. On a less pedantic note, I'm not sure Bitcoin is any better than the alternative of a Bitcoin-free world for your example usage. Lots of "real" US Dol…

Bitcoins are inherently unlimited - they can be divided down to 8 decimal places for a total of 2.1 quadrillion units.

Unlimited for the purpose of moving currency. Right now just trying to move a million dollars by Bitcoin will move the market significantly and likely one party will get screwed.

Re: Bitcoin's comeback: should Western Union be afraid?

#73

Post by binarybits »

mrb wrote: post #70

"The original run-up in prices could easily be explained as a speculative bubble, and the subsequent decline as the popping of that bubble. But if that were the whole story, then the value of Bitcoins should have continued to decline" What a stupid statement to make. By definition, a bubble grows, then bursts, then things are back to normal. Similarly, the stock market did not indefinitely continued to decline after…

Stocks are valuable because they're a claim on a stream of future dividends. Bitcoins, in contrast produce no dividends and aren't intrinsically useful. So the question is why are they valuable at all?

Also, the name-calling isn't necessary.

Re: Bitcoin's comeback: should Western Union be afraid?

#74

Post by GFischer »

jbm wrote: post #71
Smirnoff wrote: post #57

Western Union (Business Services) employee here. I disagree with the author on many levels: 1. Government regulations. Wire transfer industry is a HIGHLY regulated industry. There is no way BitCoin will be able to operate without complying with AML (AntiMoney Laundering) and AntiTerrorist regulations. Many names/countries/organizations are on OFAC list. Thus, the minute you transfer a wire to Mohammad or to someone i…

I'm guessing you didn't meant to come off as bigoted but I have a lot of friends named Mohammad, none of whom have any legal issues, nor are any of them members of terrorist organizations. If the attitude towards me sending money to one of them for any number of legitimate reasons is baseless suspicion, maybe many people like me will wind up looking for alternatives - like bitcoin. At the expense of karma, allow me t…

I'm not the poster, but I also work for a regulated industry, and I have to comply with those regulations, which I certainly don't agree with (and even campaigned against). I also guess that Smirnoff didn't mean it that way either.

So, it's probably not Western Union who's to blame when sending money to Mohammed (or José Rodriguez which is an extremely common name here) is a big hassle for all parties involved, it's the regulators. The only thing WU can be blamed for is for working within the rules. It's not bigotry by WU.

As he said, if services start providing money transfers (using Bitcoin or whatever) without complying with regulations, they'll probably will have to be based somewhere outside the US's influence, and will eventually be blocked and impeded in the US (see: online poker, only worse)

Re: Bitcoin's comeback: should Western Union be afraid?

#75

Post by lmm »

vrotaru wrote: post #13
bunderbunder wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's an analogy you really want to draw. The Euro's current problems are due to governments with Euro-denominated debt being unable to take the easy way out of servicing their debt by printing money. One of Bitcoin's defining features is that it's impossible for governments to devalue the currency by just printing money. Since both currencies behave the same way in this regard, a Bitcoin economy would…

Oh, no. The governments which will borrow more in bitcoin than will be able to pay back, will just default. When Argentina/Russia defaulted on their debts denominated in dollars, how bad was that for the dollar? So... Bad for them (governments), bad for their foolish creditors but a matter of trifling importance for bitcoin as protocol and store of value.

So I think there's a reason they call the time when Russia defaulted the "Rouble crisis".

Re: Bitcoin's comeback: should Western Union be afraid?

#76

Post by lmm »

jl6 wrote: post #34

Bitcoin now is like the internet was in 1985. There is a huge stack of infrastructure yet to be built in order to deliver on the early pre-hyped promises. I don't think anybody understands this domain well enough to predict the outcome; it's very clearly in an experimental phase. It may well be ridiculous to believe Bitcoin will replace the dollar (much as some believed the internet would replace all manner of things…

To compare with the internet is to compare with the 1% of these kind of ideas that actually succeeds. To me it feels a lot more about the Second Life hype of the early 2000s - we heard stories about people paying millions of dollars for "virtual land", companies held events there, some people were saying it would be the next internet and at the same time a horde of detractors were saying it was all pointless. And then it gradually just faded from view.

Re: Bitcoin's comeback: should Western Union be afraid?

#77

Post by GFischer »

creativeembassy wrote: post #38
jl6 wrote: post #34

Bitcoin now is like the internet was in 1985. There is a huge stack of infrastructure yet to be built in order to deliver on the early pre-hyped promises. I don't think anybody understands this domain well enough to predict the outcome; it's very clearly in an experimental phase. It may well be ridiculous to believe Bitcoin will replace the dollar (much as some believed the internet would replace all manner of things…

This is a neat analogy. The biggest hurdle to using Bitcoins now is the (lack of) ease of use. There's a potential startup culture here that takes transaction fees from Bitcoins, and presents them in a easier formats to use and transfer. Once that problem is solved (and the adoption of the internet had to solve the exact same problems), then the audience will follow.

I disagree. The biggest hurdle is that the use of Bitcoins as currency probably either already is or will be made illegal.

In my country I'm pretty certain it's already illegal (there are some provisions regarding electronic currency). It's even worse in countries with exchange controls (like Argentina).

Edit: our laws are so badly redacted that Linden Dollars, Facebook Coins and all that are probably illegal as well, but nobody cares, unless they get popular. The fun of selectively enforced laws ...

Re: Bitcoin's comeback: should Western Union be afraid?

#78

Post by makomk »

Smirnoff wrote: post #57

Western Union (Business Services) employee here. I disagree with the author on many levels: 1. Government regulations. Wire transfer industry is a HIGHLY regulated industry. There is no way BitCoin will be able to operate without complying with AML (AntiMoney Laundering) and AntiTerrorist regulations. Many names/countries/organizations are on OFAC list. Thus, the minute you transfer a wire to Mohammad or to someone i…

Of course, right now Bitcoin also serves a fraction of the number of countries that Western Union does. Basically, unless you're in Europe, North America or Australia you almost certainly don't have any way of exchanging money for Bitcoins. Even with Bitcoin only available to a limited number of countries, AML regulations are causing problems for users already.

Re: Bitcoin's comeback: should Western Union be afraid?

#79

Post by mrb »

binarybits wrote: post #73
mrb wrote: post #70

"The original run-up in prices could easily be explained as a speculative bubble, and the subsequent decline as the popping of that bubble. But if that were the whole story, then the value of Bitcoins should have continued to decline" What a stupid statement to make. By definition, a bubble grows, then bursts, then things are back to normal. Similarly, the stock market did not indefinitely continued to decline after…

Stocks are valuable because they're a claim on a stream of future dividends. Bitcoins, in contrast produce no dividends and aren't intrinsically useful. So the question is why are they valuable at all? Also, the name-calling isn't necessary.

That's not the reason stocks have value. For one thing, many stocks don't return dividends. They are valuable because legally a stock owner owns a piece of the company, therefore a piece of its assets (and future revenus which will help grow its future assets.)

Secondly, Bitcoin's decentralized nature, unfrozable assets, etc, is inherently valuable because unmatched by any other system.

Re: Bitcoin's comeback: should Western Union be afraid?

#80

Post by gerggerg »

gleetree wrote: post #69
gerggerg wrote: post #61

What's kind of crazy to me is that people don't think that if bitcoin really gets successful companies like paypal, visa, google etc. won't just come out with their own 'coins' backed by more user friendly software and possibly other incentives while maintaining anonymity.

These are all centralized companies - if they go out of business what happens to your money? What if the company decides to print more of this money for itself? Napster went out of business becasue the government shut it down. Bittorrent is still going strong. Bitcoin is p2p like bittorent. There is no central point of failure.

'Cept it being replaced by something more useful.
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