Bitcoin is the Next Skype

An anonymous comment was left on one of my posts, but vanished, for some reason. I'm going to re-post it here (I still have it in my email), because I think he/she made an excellent point:

"Everybody talks about PayPal...

'It's like PayPal, but free!' ...etc.

But I've come to realize that PayPal is a poor analogy.

Skype.

Why did Skype take off? It was because families sundered by borders could talk to each other for free. The largest percentage of Skype early adopters were South Americans with family members who immigrated to the U.S.

By the same token (and somewhat depreciating the silliness of Silk Road), I think cross-border and cross-currency transfer of funds is what will - sooner, rather than later - prove to be the killer app for Bitcoin.

Just as with Skype, there's nothing even remotely in the same ballpark. The technical know-how and hardware requirements for Bitcoin are really pretty analogous to what Skype was, at its beginning. The usefulness of Bitcoin is roughly the same as Skype.

There are certainly valid and important political uses for Bitcoin: donations to disapproved organizations (Wikileaks, OccupyWallStreet, etc.), donations in anonymity, cheat-proof donation recording, and many others.

But sending fifty bucks back to grandma in the old country (or vice versa) is where more effort should be applied. Because that's what people are going to be using."

-Anonymous

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Bitcoin: Globalization for the People

Globalization - it's a dirty word. The free-trade agreements and corporate-friendly legislation associated with globalization allow businesses to thrive in new, world-wide markets for products and services. CEOs are able to call upon the cheapest labour from countries with the lowest standards of living, dodge environmental regulations, and set up their headquarters where tax laws are the most favourable.

Meanwhile, individuals are feeling the pain. The 99%, as coined by the Occupy movement, have become pawns in a game of corporate chess. For those of us lucky enough to make a decent income, goods have become cheaper (in more ways than one), but at a huge cost to others. Our co-humans around the world are hurting as they pocket their pennies for back-breaking, unsafe labour, and as they stew in the environmental catastrophes that are their cities and countries.

Why, you must be wondering by now, is it so easy for a business to employ thousands of labourers, move tonnes of goods, and exchange billions in currency, without regard for borders, yet you can't send Uncle Carlos in Argentina $20 without jumping through more hoops than a Barnum & Bailey white tiger while getting your wallet pillaged like a father with three teenaged daughters?

Imagine, for a moment, that there was some mysterious, magical method for an individual to move any quantity of money, across any border, instantly, for less than a penny (now bear with me, because you're probably beginning to think I'm crazy). Imagine if that method did not involve a central authority, and was not associated with a bank, a corporation, or a government?

If such a thing existed, people would become globalized. Just as a glacier melts to fill canyons and valleys with water, the wealth of the world would begin to flow freely, not among a select elite, but between all of us. The trickle-down economy would turn into a raging river, and yes, all of the boats would float.

What if a sweatshop in Thailand could sell their jeans, not for $1.50 each to Gap, but for $15 each over the Internet, and receive the entire $15? It would no longer be a sweatshop. What if a child in the Philippines could go to school and be fed because his aunt in Vancouver can send home $10 a week, and he could get the whole $10? Do you see how the standard of living would increase everywhere, and not just for the fee collectors and corporations?

Unfortunately no one had invented such a thing... until now.

Bitcoin: it's Globalization for the People. Got coins?

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Kiva Software Engineers Pushing for Bitcoin Implementation

I like to browse the Newbie forum over on Bitcointalk because many users who can't yet access the main forum will often make interesting posts. Well, today I stumbled across a doozy:

Hi all,

I work at Kiva (http://www.kiva.org) as a software engineer.
I'm interested in talking more about Bitcoin and Kiva, and considering the rules here, although I am no stranger to Bitcoin, it seems it may be best to give a few posts about what sort of things are going on that can bring the two together.

There are 3 engineers here in addition to me who own Bitcoins and have an interest in spreading their use further. One of the ways we realized we could do that is by first educating the organization about what Bitcoins are. Kiva has a neat concept of self-run "Brown-bags" where anyone can discuss a topic (sort of like a Google tech talk), so we put together a presentation to educate fellow Kivans on Bitcoins, both their benefits and drawbacks.

Later on I realized some of our lenders were interested in Bitcoins as well, though as you can see, they also know that there are both benefits and drawbacks: http://www.kivafriends.org/index.php?topic=5789.0

In my next post, sometime later today, I'll discuss sort of a roadmap of how Kiva could start getting a Bitcoin project going.

Don't be led astray though, I know that any project to implement Bitcoin would take at the very least 6 months, and more likely a year, mostly due to the non-technical hurdles (like legal and auditing). So in a third post, I'll talk about why those things are an issue.

Cheers,

mrchilly

For those of you who have not heard of Kiva, they are a micro-lender providing small loans to people worldwide, with a focus on developing countries, to assist entrepreneurs with their small businesses.

Since 2005, 630,000 people have lent money through Kiva, totaling $249 million.

Bitcoin would be an ideal currency for Kiva to use, as it reduces the number of currency exchanges required by half. Further down the road, if Bitcoin catches on in developing countries as some people theorize, it could eliminate the requirement to exchange currencies altogether, thus ensuring a larger percentage of the loan actually gets to where it's needed most.

This will be an interesting story to follow.

Here's the post.

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