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Apply with me to YC in the next 3 days and change the world

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Re: Apply with me to YC in the next 3 days and change the world

#71
I don't think you've properly thought this through. Many people have, and there's a reason we still have the system we have today:

How do you handle chargebacks? What about fraud? If you don't properly protect your users, you're not really providing a good service, and you need to make the rules incredibly clear for your merchants, they aren't going to work with you.

How are merchants supposed to respond to the volatility of bitcoin? For a currency that sees semi-wild (compared to standard FOREX) swings in value, they could be waffling between the red and the black on a daily basis. There's no value in holding bitcoins when there are better currencies out there.

Where do you make money? Transactionally? On a flat-fee basis? In loaning out the cash? The problem with banking is that the fractional reserve system has created a risk environment such that you can't make money unless you're leveraging your reserves for lending, and that's an incredibly complex system on its own. The big banks make money because they are vastly huge. How would you move into that scene? Is the intent to be acquired? How do you leverage startup inertia to compete against a company doing hundreds or thousands of times the volume in a day than you'd hope to see in a month?

Just a few questions. Many people have given this particular problem a lot of thought, and none of them have been able to make it work as of yet.

Re: Apply with me to YC in the next 3 days and change the world

#72
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a precedent for doing it legally, Paypal, Facebook Credits, etc are all digital currencies. They do it by getting licensed as a money transmitter and complying with all AML and know your customer laws. It's an expensive and long process but people are able to do it. Not sure I fully understand the last two bullets. In general I think you're right that this startup will have larger legal challenges/costs than…

Paypal is more of a wallet service that works with real currency. Even then it's quite heavily regulated in India, where I live. I'm not sure about other developing nations. FB credits have extremely limited use as far as I know, so it's not much of a threat. Another non state-issued currency is food coupons (like sodexo). As long as the new currency cannot be universally used, it's of no concern to the authorities.…

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Re: Apply with me to YC in the next 3 days and change the world

#73
post #57
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you may not have heard of m-pesa - which arose out of people being able to transfer mobile minutes and then became a fully fledge mobile currency in it's own right.. as xtrumanx says (below) m-pesa is huge. you might also note that this has already happened ;-)

That is very interesting. Is there some way I can start developing apps for the M-Pesa ecosystem? Mind pointing me in the right direction? :)

sure is (interesting). unfortunately I don't know enough about it beyond just suggesting you google m-pesa and go from there.. ;_)

Re: Apply with me to YC in the next 3 days and change the world

#74
post #71

I don't think you've properly thought this through. Many people have, and there's a reason we still have the system we have today: How do you handle chargebacks? What about fraud? If you don't properly protect your users, you're not really providing a good service, and you need to make the rules incredibly clear for your merchants, they aren't going to work with you. How are merchants supposed to respond to the volat…

Sometimes thinking this much about why not to do something keeps you away accomplishing things in life. I am sure when Amazon started in 1994, if they had to worry about all the problems associating with selling things online, they wouldn't start. If Google had to worry about how to make money from a search engine in beginning, they wouldn't be here. Assume that problem you going to face in future will have solutions and just start your idea.
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