Paying with bitcoins in Curacao
Yesterday I saw something interesting on the Caribbean network about that more shops are accepting bitcoin as a legal payment.
Pexels
I clicked through this article and first landed on a video about why a supermarket and a surfshop are enthusiastic about this
Other shops on the Dutch Caribbean island who are accepting bitcoing as a payment method are restaurant Kome, Windsurfing Curaçao, restaurant de Wine Cellar, telecombedrijf Digicel, PK Electronics, Startup Stock Exchange and Esperamos Supermarket.
Honestly, I can only be super excited about this because small islands are even more dependent on the local banks who often charge ridiculous fees and their governments seem to change the rules almost every other day. The normal citizen who often sends or receives money from family abroad have the surprise every time how much this transaction will cost now. Moneygram and Western Union are the big thieves in this, with in general lines of dozens of persons tryin to get to their money.
Making digital transaction might help a bit having a more fair play for these island citizens
But what even was more surprising to me to read in this artikel
Is that what is not is told in the video but in the artikel itself is that the Central Bank of Curacao and Sint Martin is investigating is digital money YET centralized would be an option for these islands. This coin would be linked to the NAF (North Antillean Florijn or North Antillean Guilder) and would 'just be' a digital way of making transactions but still centralized by the banks.
Now honestly I don't see any benefit in that at all. If I realisticly looked around me in Sint Martin the general thought about electronic money was not received very well. Meaning people don't trust banks (for a reason), bills are mostly payed in cash (standing in lines for hours) and whenever I spoke about that I would pay my electricity bills online, everybody would look at me as if I was totally crazy.
It would not be bad to have more digitalized for these islands, money laundering is surely a gigantic issue which will be better registered when going digital, centralized or decentralized.
Will all of this work??? I dont know, but it surely is interesting looking in!
niiice
yeahhhhhhhh
Interesting development, the more that accept it, the sweeter the pie as confidence would be built around the ecosystem. The central bank is exploring digital currencies to reduce the cost involve in producing the paper notes
Which is that case is not a bad deal because burocracy is a crazy contraproductive thing there indeed
exploring is a step at least!
Its a start for the dutchies
Well yeah and island Dutchies are even a different type of people! Lets see what happens
Lets See....
Interesting - I believe crypto will do a lot for more remote places - but trust is a huge issue. The more it looks like the opposite of a bank the greater the win probably :-)
Same thing, I think crypto has a lot of potential there but you have no idea how sceptic people are over digital traffic. If not somebody signed it off and put 7000 stamps on it than it never really happened
Yes - that's a disappointing thought though - as I said I see the biggest potential win for remoter places but maybe we underestimate the whole concept of people wanting/needing a 'real face' to talk with :-/
These are good points too! i really believe that crypto are the next step on the evolution of money and is just matter of time to people start use it on daily basis!
I really hope it will bring so much for all countries as yours who are struggling with the governments fucking it up for the people on what the value of money is!