How Steemit, Crypto-currency and blockchain can help developing countries. Part 2
After My First Post Discussing How Crypto Currency can help a country with a bad economy I Realized that developing countries might be the future of crypto-currency. The disruption cryptocurrencies promise make them suited to emerging economies inspired by @andu
My Thoughts in my Post was how could blockchain technology or a crypto-currency help the situation in a developing country like Egypt. Could allow people to import products from abroad without worrying about the price instability. Maybe even exchange goods and services (alt currency) or even buy bitcoins :)
According to Wallis-Brown, as cited by Startup Smart, a number of developing countries which have large amount of people will no longer use the traditional banking system. He said that cryptocurrency might replace it. While Bitcoin may not end up being the currency of choice, the current virtual currency protocol will no doubt be the blueprint of cryptocurrency which will be used to do online transactions. This technology certainly makes it easier for people to do real time transactions without involving any third party, such as the bank or credit card providers, in the process.
There's a lot of hype regarding Bitcoin's potential impact on developing economies, and it's sometimes hard to separate the idle daydreams from the workable visions. We throw around hot concepts like "empowering the unbanked" and "building decentralized, trustless organizations," but these are ultimately meaningless if the execution behind them isn't up to snuff.
UN Paper Claims Bitcoin Solutions for Developing Countries Could Be Interpreted as Neo-Colonialism
Narratives on why it may be empowering populations in less developed nations have emerged, including:
- As a means to facilitate low-cost remittances for those seeking to transfer small amounts of money internationally.
- As a means for an otherwise excluded individual to have a decentralized global bank account, accessible by downloading an open source wallet from the Internet, versus having to set up an account with a financial institution.
- Providing the basis for a richer set of financial services.
There is also a more political critique of bitcoin’s role in developing economies.
Those viewing bitcoin as a “life-raft” currency imply that it is desirable to “escape to the Internet” rather than find more fundamental solutions to a country’s underlying problems. Advocating that a vulnerable country adopt bitcoin could be merely a short-term solution and one that distracts from strengthening already fragile institutions.
Blockchain 2.0
The blockchain stands at the cutting edge of much innovation involving bitcoin.
“Smart contracts,” which are small bundles of code that record on a blockchain, allow participants to interact and undertake simple tasks.
A coded blockchain-based script can activate when two parties send bitcoins to an escrow account controlled by the script and release the bitcoins to whoever wins a bet on the average level of rainfall over a certain period. This arrangement describes a blockchain-based weather derivatives contract.
Such simple building-block contracts can form the basis of more complex, multi-stage or multi-function entities, referred to as decentralized autonomous organizations.
How to make this happen?
Bitcoin can be earned through faucets on the Internet, has zero maintaining balance, does not require a credit check, is corruption-resistant (politically and financially speaking), and can potentially grow in value over time. These aren't just "cool features." These features collectively represent the only financial services that these economic tiers could hope to be eligible for.
Whether or not these folks will eventually embrace Bitcoin is a question of tooling and education. We've got a long road ahead of us -- and undoubtedly it will be paved with good intentions (to mix metaphors) -- but on paper at least, BTC is a tremendously viable solution for the Philippines, if not the developing world in general.
Where To Go From Here?
A good starting point would be to build new research into the following areas:
- The ongoing development and deepening of global bitcoin markets, tracing to what extent those in developing countries are adopting it.
- The challenges and potentials for the bitcoin system’s usage from a financial inclusion perspective. This includes its use as a remittance system and as an alternative bank account.
- The extent to which bitcoin as a currency system could interact with blockchain 2.0, smart-contract technology to create collectively-run (and solidarity-based) financial schemes that do not rely on normal financial institutions.
I hope all this made sense.
If you guys have any ideas we could brainstorm together.
Any thought will be highly appreciated
sources:
https://e27.co/developing-countries-might-be-the-future-of-cryptocurrency-20140721/
https://medium.com/startupph-chronicles/how-can-bitcoin-help-the-developing-world-ebf6b9b82d1f#.csqzp0eah
https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/will-bitcoin-blockchain-build-finance-developing-economies/
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I look forward to reading testimonies from people in less developed countries when payouts occur. I think we will see some amazing stuff and start to realise how powerful this platform is.
This is presented to look like this @hossary is the author. Apologies if you are in fact the author of those three articles that this is pulled from, but something tells me that is not the case. Without sources, it's simple plagiarism.
"According to Wallis-Brown, as cited by Startup Smart, a number of developing countries which have large amount of people will no longer use the traditional banking system. He said that cryptocurrency might replace it. " https://e27.co/developing-countries-might-be-the-future-of-cryptocurrency-20140721/
"There's a lot of hype regarding Bitcoin's potential impact on developing economies, and it's sometimes hard to separate the idle daydreams from the workable visions. We throw around hot concepts like "empowering the unbanked" and "building decentralized, trustless organizations," but these are ultimately meaningless if the execution behind them isn't up to snuff."
"Bitcoin can be earned through faucets on the Internet, has zero maintaining balance, does not require a credit check, is corruption-resistant (politically and financially speaking), and can potentially grow in value over time. These aren’t just “cool features.” These features collectively represent the only financial services that these economic tiers could hope to be eligible for."
https://medium.com/startupph-chronicles/how-can-bitcoin-help-the-developing-world-ebf6b9b82d1f#.csqzp0eah
the rest is from: https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/will-bitcoin-blockchain-build-finance-developing-economies/
@jamtaylor I am not the author of these 3 articles, but it is not intended to look like I am the author. I was doing my own reseach on the issue and I took bits and pieces for different articles to simplify my findings. I am only trying to answer ther question "how crypto currency can help developing countries and replace the financial system" as presented in my earlier post. I added the sources to the post and will make sure to cite my resourses in upcomming posts if I use other material. :)
I apologize if this seemed to be plagirised. @pfunk
Thanks for adding the sources. If you want to, you can include inline sources and use quotes ( put > before the line and it makes it a quotation) and then use links to show the source directly after it.. that will streamline your posts AND provide good sources so that people can follow along.
Something like this:
Here I am, writing an article from my brain — I'll need to do some research first. Wikipedia says that
Another organ in the body is the heart, which is also a band, which is totally sweet, dude.
Let me know what you think of this article in the comments.
That way you can use snippets of other articles without it looking like you intended to pass it off as your own thoughts, and it's all nice and neat and tidy. You can take a look at the Styling with Markdown page to see how to do all the fancy stuff
Keep posting!
I think it can help only if there is an easy way to convert to their own currency (which then allows them to pay bills etc). The key thing holding back cryptos in the developing world is lack of exchanges and interfaces with their own currencies. If you can't convert it to your own currency and you can't use steem to buy stuff directly, it doesn't help.
Here in Barbados (sometimes considered a developed country, sometimes considered a developing country) we have a local exchange servicing the region (bitt.com) which makes it much, much easier to buy in to cryptos with fiat. Unfortunately, currently there are no major merchants who accept bitcoin in the country... however, one can still use a bitcoin debit card to pay bills and buy diapers.
It's a bit of a step backward in that it's still relying on the 'old' fiat economy and going through a middleman (the card provider, the card maker, and VISA as well) but for the time being, it's extremely useful for those who have some type of crypto income to be able to spend it on every day purchases. The merchant does not need to accept bitcoin, as you're essentially converting to fiat when you load up the card with btc. If I can shill here a little bit, I personally recommend Wirex (E-Coin) as a card provider, Xapo I cannot recommend because they require mobile SMS, their system did not work with my cell provider, and their support was not helpful. Wirex works perfectly.
Now, another unfortunate thing for anybody utilising the bitcoin debit cards outside of the US, EU and UK is that every single transaction is considered a foreign transaction, which incurs a 3% transaction fee. Wirex is looking to reduce that percentage, and Shakepay is looking to do away with it altogether.
It's not ideal, but it's a solution for the time being.