Send your money home safely and quickly

So shoutout to @AlexPMorris who helped out by providing good links to two projects, one of which I could use on the commandline which worked better than the previous, as in it didn't repeat any things spoken, and you can see the result in the YouTube subtitles and transcript here below.

We kept making fun of Google versus DuckDuckGo which I shouldn't use Alex said but the thing actually is that I didn't use a good search string. Using "Github" "merge" and "srt", if I remember correctly, did the trick.

BitSpark is an interesting project to say the least. I didn't understand what remittance was as you can witness by my question near the end. Always fun to hear yourself asking stupid questions LOL. But I do think BlockPay could help a lot in India where the government is trying to ban cash. BlockPay would give them a lot of flak I think, especially now BitShares supports stealth. Sp thanks also to @kencode and other for his great work on BlockPay

Code for cleaning up the subtitles

sed 's/\r$//' "$input" |grep -v -- "-->" |grep -v "^$" |grep -E -v "^[0-9]+$" |sed 's/WEBVTT//' |tr -s ' ' |tr -d '\t' |sed 's/\\/\\\\/g' |sed 's/"/\\"/g' > transcript

sed '

: again

/[^].]$/ {

N

s/\n/ /

t again

}

' transcript > final-transcript

You could just copy and paste as it is. Please note the second sed command should be on multiple lines like that. It might look crazy but it works.

Future

I think interactive transcripts will be the future. But for now we have to do with subtitles and transcripts. Let me know if you would like to have time with those transcripts too. And I'll be posting updates soon as I think I have a good workflow for the subtitles which can be transformed into transcripts.

I might even use the YouTube API directly but everyone can now use his or her own YouTube channel to edit what they've said to make more sense or editing misinterpreted words, which happens often with uncommon words and names like BitShares DEX.

I'll be standing by if you need help so please let me know in the comments or on Discord where I am using the same nickname. Know that you are more easily searchable when you use subtitles or transcripts. YouTube even demonetizes your video if they find words they don't like. But you can take those subtitles from YouTube and take them elsewhere so don't worry about evil Google ;) However you should know that @dtube doesn't support subtitles yet. I'm not sure about View.ly and @BitChute, but the last I time checked, which was a month or two ago, BitChute did not.

Transcript

@bitspark: Hello thank you very much fuzzy and I guess we've got 15 minutes. I just gave a brief intro in the bitshares hangout but let's talk a little bit more about Zephyr and our token here today.

So my name is George. I'm the CEO and co-founder of a company called Bitspark. We're based in Hong Kong. We've been around for about three years and about back in 2014 we were the first to do a remittance transaction using Bitcoin as the means of transmission, so cash in cash out using Bitcoin to send money around the world. Since then we've expanded to seven countries and we have about 15 to 20 money transfers of signed up to ou system. Predominantly though our home market is Hong Kong and as you know that's where we focus. But we're looking to go global and essentially what we do as a company is we provide software fo physical money transfer shops. So they are like your bricks and mortar Western unions. These are the stores where people send money around the world.
They have cash maybe they don't have a bank account. This is this is how things happen. They need software to convey money overseas and essentially that's what we provide but we use crypto as the means to do that instead of the banks. We're about half the cost of everyone else and we're looking to expand to new countries and new currencies through the use of BitShares which we recently announced. We've also just announced a a token project called a zephyr and that will be starting on the 6th of October for the public. You can see it at Zephyr.bitspark.io and I'll post a link in chat later on. Essentially what we're trying to do with this UIA (User Initiated Asset) is this is a reward token for joining the Bitspark remittance network. So whenever you send a transaction like visit money transfer shop or whenever say the money transfer shop business signs up to Bitspark we will reward them Zephyr. So we will essentially be paying them to do that; paying them to do them things that they already do for free. If they sign up to Western Union Western une is not paying them to do that. This is what we think is an effective way to expand our network to more countries and more currencies around the world. We're using the token Zephyr in order to do that. And what we're actually doing as well is a percentage of transaction fees for every successful transaction on the network will go towards buying back Zephyr from the [BitShares] DEX. As we issue more coins to more people more people do more transactions and then that means more transactions that's buying Zephyr back from the DEX.
So it supports the value of the UIA itself. It's not just something that someone would would want one to sell but you know as our network grows, the idea is so does the value of the token.
That's what we're trying to achieve with this.
We really think that this is a good way to incentivize people wherever they may be in the world. That's a bit of a short intro and I'd be happy to take any questions and sort of go from there.

@officialfuzzy: My question that I had was about how do you foresee making it so the value proposition before the Zephyr token seems to increase? Is it going to be like based off of a supply demand curve that you guys kind of have pretty established? You're gonna buy them and kind of burn them and it's just going to continue going up in value based on a percentage of what you guys will buy them back [at]?

@bitspark: Yes a bit of an explainer when a money transfer shop does a transaction we leave it up to them to set their fees.
It depends on the jurisdiction that where they're at and that will you know dictate the fees. So if you're in a very competitive place maybe your fee is pretty low but if you're not in a competitive place then maybe you can afford to have a higher fee. But of course there's more people sign up get on the same system then you'll be forced to drop your fee.
Let's give an example of say sending $250 to someone in anothe country. That's the standard around the world for remittances. An let's say the fee is perhaps you know 4% or 3%. In Hong Kong our fee is 1%. But you know let's use a another example. So a couple of percent it is what your standard fee is going to be.
And 25% of that of that fee will be used to buy back Zephyrs. That's if you're sending $250 you know almost dollar or something like that will be used to buy back a Zephyr from the market.
And that'll be happening continuously every time a transaction happens. The more transactions that happen the more buybacks that will be. Our intention is that Bitspark itself will be the buyer in that market and we will just be executing transactions as they come. It's accountable in that people will be able to see what we're doing, they'll be able to see the transactions happening on the blockchain. They'll also be able to ensure that we are using every single dollar from from those transactions to buy it back from the [BitShares] DEX as well and be transparent about that. So the amount that we'll be buying from the DEX obviously depends on the fees of that particular transaction. But over time the incentive is that we're constantly going to be buying as we have more and more transactions. And why do we think there's going to be more transactions? We'll essentially we're giving people tokens to sign up so they only get those tokens when they do a transaction. So that is how it is going to work.

@la5t: I've got a follow-up to that. Forgive me if you said this and I missed it. So you buy them back from the transaction and then what do you do with them?

@bitspark: At this stage the company will be having them as a balance, as an asset. Now the question is what is Bitspark going to do with those tokens over time. Maybe we burn them.
Maybe we keep them for or you know marketing purposes or something like that. Spreading the network even more. That's a good conversation for the community and something which I'm sort of thinking about is now. But the idea is that we will be purchasing them and we will be locking them away for some period of time.
At this stage it's going to be dictated by the company. But it depends what the community would be more comfortable with We're happy to think about that.

@la5t: How do you get involved in that decision-making process as a community?

@officialfuzzy: Have you considered kind... Go ahead.

@bitspark: Um well I mean come to a chat in discord and you know let us know what you think about Zephyr or any other the aspects of it. So yeah I mean you know it is a UIA issued by us as a company. Our intent is that over time we'll be the buyer and maybe a percentage of the tokens will be used to. More issuance at the end of the day or issuing rewards or something like that. So maybe that would come from the balance of which we've already bought back. That would be a good question to have.

@la5t: Awesome thank you.

@officialfuzzy: Yeah I would like to discuss it a little bit because there are a lot of potential value propositions that can be used. I personally think something like buying it back with an increasing pool and like just giving a percentage based on a monthly amount that you're gonna buy back.
People wonder I think if the tokens are going to go up in price so [they] won't sell them. So you create that dynamic and then at the same time if they are thinking that the ones that are bought back are going to be like burned or something like that then you might have the opportunity where you're starting to show people. Or a percentage of them are burned now it's a deflationary thing so it almost guarantees it's going to go up in price as the as the transactions increase on the network, in addition to that of course right? These are just off of my

@bitspark: Yeah.

@officialfuzzy: head.

@bitspark: Yeah absolutely. So we wanted to make this system sustainable as well. We want to be able to, whatever ou network expands at, we want to have the ability to say yup you know a year from now we're still going to have the ability to issue you tokens [and] we're not going to run out. It obviously depends what the rewards are per transaction, put per sign up o these sorts of things. I think the community would want to perhaps have a buyback in and burn. And we're open to it. So definitely let you thoughts be heard.

@la5t: And their option would be something like with Steem does with the power down? You could buy back and say we're not gonna be able to use these for a year o something like that? And once the year is up you're able to decide what to do with them?

@bitspark: Yeah I mean it distributing though in some way then that means that what we're buying back is then entering circulation again which has the net benefit of then people may sell it again. So it kind of reduces the benefit of us buying. So there needs to be some sort of lockup mechanism in place for sure.

@la5t: Cool.

@officialfuzzy: Does anybody have any question or comments regarding this remittance markets? Because what they're doing I'm going to make clear. Because not everybody here [might know]. Most of you are more from Steem and at this point. But there's obviously a lot of crossover between the platforms. So I'm not trying to say that you don't know what you're talking about or anything, but one of the big things that we've talked about earlier is that remittance markets are hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars a yea and that's with a B. What like six hundred billion or something like that? To be able to give these different

@bitspark: Yep.

@officialfuzzy: countries a decentralized means of accomplishing remittance, in a scalable way mind you everyone, is what they're bringing to the bitshares.
And that's huge.

@la5t: Just to add on that; it's like I live in a city that has a lot of people who have family in other nations. And what they do is they move here they work and then they send money back home. And the way they do that right now through Western Union in these other shops is not the most efficient way after blockchain got developed. So this is a pretty exciting project, am I right?

@bitspark: Yeah absolutely and you know that's just the official numbers there's 600 billion.
Most people think that the unofficial way sort of on the black market as well as at least you know double that. So there's a lot of money out there which is going back and forth between different places and people use these cash shops. It's what they do. Many people, for small transactions, they might not have a bank account. So having some online website or some app, it's not useful for the large majority of the population.
You've got to have something which targets cash. You got to have something which targets where people are out at the shops. And the beauty of this system is they don't have to know about all the technical stuff behind a blockchain and BitShares. They just go to a shop which they've gone to and then they put the cash and then they say "Hey I want to send it somewhere" and then the shop will go and type it into Bitspark and it'll get sent. So the actual end customer doesn't need to know all the technical stuff behind how blockchains work to actually use it.

@officialfuzzy: And...

@nutela: And so what about BlockPay what resemblance is there between BlockPay and you? If you do know BlockPay [that is]?

@bitspark: I've only looked briefly at Blockpay. My understanding is there a POS terminal correct? More targeted at merchants?

@nutela: Yeah exactly.

@bitspark: Yeah so that's a different use case entirely different customer base.
It's for POS terminal transactions.
We're full money transfer shops and money transfe businesses.
Their cash in cash out vendors that's and internationally. So different use case but yeah totally support what the Blockpay guys are doing looks awesome.

@nutela: Okay great. I just wanted to see the difference thanks a lot.

@bitspark: Yes so if there're any other questions you can find me on the telegram chat or also in discord as well. We have a Bitspark channel. And that's where we'll be talking all the things Zephyr.
As I said,token sale visually begins to the public on the sixth of October.
And there's some discounts in for that as well. And we're happy to make it happen. We'll be rolling this out within the next few months with the UN in Tajikistan.
I spoke a little bit about that in the previous chat but that's going to be our first pilot of the whole system.

@officialfuzzy: Well I don't know Tajikistan is but..

@la5t: Fuzzy's gone... [and] is back.

@officialfuzzy: Am I coming through okay?

@officialfuzzy: Okay so I just wanted to make sure. How the Philippines are is they have a lot of these mom-and-pop shops essentially and they all have phones and basic internet almost on them, like many people! I was stunned by how many people carry around their phone and have some access to Internet with it.

@officialfuzzy: So my question is: are you guys planning on like all these mobile applications

@bitspark: Yeah.

@officialfuzzy: for them just to download it to like a tablet or something and they can do it that way?

@bitspark: Oh yeah we already have our mobile app called "Sendy". You can check it out in the Android App Store [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.bitspark.android]. From that you can see where our existing money transfer shops are. And particularly to your point about the Philippines; we already have about a hundred thousand cash out destinations there. Now these are destinations which are connected to us. Not one hundred thousand locations using Bitspark.
But having said that that's every single bank in the Philippines you can receive money and every single cash physical shop. Some of the big ones there are called sub wanna and Lua LBC and a couple of others. That's how people receive money, is these physical shops. So we have to be able to hook into that, which we do. But the idea is that you can download our app wherever you may be in the world. And you'll be able to visit a Bitspark shop or a BitSpark connected cash in or cash out location and be able to send money on your phone. Philippines is a good use case for that. I think they have free Facebook there which is why everyone is on Facebook.

@officialfuzzy: Mm-hmm yes yeah.
on the internet, the megabytes are not counted towards your plan o something like that.
Well my alarm just actually went off and cut me off. So really quickly before we...

@la5t: What? The Zephyr token is not currently trading is that correct?

@officialfuzzy: go any further,

@bitspark: Correct, not currently trading until the end of the token sale period which will be the 6th of November.

@officialfuzzy: Okay. So people can look forward to that and I would love to hear back from you a little bit more in the future. But I do want to make clear to everybody it is on the [BitShares] DEX. You can go and actually go to see the market.
There's just nothing on there except fo by orders right now. And that means that they haven't put them out yet. So you can go see where the market is.
And I believe @steempowerpics posted it for you guys as a reply in the comments. With that said, how do people reach out to you if they would like to work with you in any way shape or form on this?

@bitspark: Yes so you can reach me at twitter at george underscore Harrap.

You can also reach me on the Bitshares telegram chat.
I think i'm at george underscore bitspark there and the same on discord as well. But if you do have any questions of the company or anything reach out to us at info at bid sparked at i/o. So that's the best locations.

@officialfuzzy: info [at] bitspark [dot] io?

@bitspark: Bitspark.io yeah.

@officialfuzzy: Well thank you very much for joining up. And I do appreciate it. I think that it cannot be understated how valuable remittance is to the crypto space and especially to these countries that you guys are bringing it to. So thank you fo the work that you're doing.
@bitspark: No worries thank you very much fuzzy fo hosting this and looking forward to hear from all the other cool projects! It's always cool to know that there are people who listen and that you guys have listens to us in the past. It always is a very humbling experience to find out who has listened to it.
So thanks for also doing that! Now up

@bitspark: Of course. [smiles]

@officialfuzzy: next is...