Foreign Transaction Fees from the Comfort of Your Own Home

Image from Finland for Thought

This latest breach of trust is brought to you by Citibank. From The Consumerist:

"...when I reviewed my credit card bill I noticed a foreign transaction fee of $11, which stood out because I haven't left the country for about a year. When I called them, they said it was for two separate charges: a design contest I'd paid for on 99 Designs, and a domain I'd purchased from Yahoo, which outsources its domain [management] to a firm in Australia. I made both purchases in US dollars, and on 99 Designs nothing even indicated that it's foreign-based until I dug around on the website."

The charges occurred because Citibank thinks doing business online with a foreign company is the same as doing it face-to-face, regardless of the currency used or whether the website is up front about the location of either their or their payment processor's offices. What's a "foreign transaction fee" anyway? Isn't a currency exchange fee enough?

Also, since when did Citibank start running ads for Bitcoin? Because, basically, that's what this is...

Read more »

Geeks and Greeks

On Wednesday, I sent out an email to the operator of bitcoinstatus.rowit.co.uk because I had noticed a spike in traffic to my blog from Greece. I wanted to know if he could provide me with historical data on the number of clients on the network that were originating from the country. He replied that he didn't have the data, but offered to begin tracking the numbers; it will take a few weeks to collect enough data for it to be useful.

Coincidentally, about 12 hours ago, a Greek national announced the opening of a "Bean BitMarket." The commentary in his blog is eye-opening, and probably typical of the feelings being felt throughout Greece at the moment:

"My friends, the economy of Greece is failling. The market are crushing. And is not just Greece, is the whole western world that has serius problem. A billionere said that this capitalist crisies and the countries that fail one after the other like domino (greece, portugal, irland, italy .......) resembles to him like the distruction of the communism an soviet union. And i am just a guy looking the armagedon coming..

However i have thought it a lot and i still like the free markets, i still like capitalism. But is this system the cause i have an enginnering digree and no job.. or is it? i am not sure. My value are in crysies also.

And then i discover bitcoin. Very very indresting! I suppose you know why too. I decided that if distruction of this system comes then bitcoin could be the first page of the new chapter.

So i will be a worker for this new revolution, like the communist or the capitalist the 1930 and 1920.. i may fail but at least i will try.

I think what is the problem of bitcoin and i believe is that real enought. Maybe you can buy some tecnology staff or service, but this is not enought. If we want this to be real we have to sell simple staff like food. Not fast food, this is still tertiary sector. Food from the source, primary sector.. we have the anker at the bottom of the market.

With this i mind i decided to start my own tiny bussiness (i am jobless any way). I will sell beans. Just bean. Greek bean at the pack of one kilo and delivery them via post. This is my plan, and i am prety excited right now."

Bitcoin is not just a hairbrained get-rich-quick scheme for geeks; it has actual real-world value and promise. For a forward-thinking person living through dire economic times, it might just be a way out.

Read more »

Bitcoin: A Harbor in a Currency Storm for Belarus and Ukraine

Two countries that have recently faced massive currency devaluation, of a magnitude that would have significantly impacted the standard of living of their populations, are Belarus and Ukraine.

Over a period of three months in late 2008, in the wake of the global financial crisis, Ukraine's currency, the hryvnia, was devalued by 38.4%. This wasn't the first time Ukraine had seen its currency crumble, with an even more significant devaluation happening in 1998, on the order of 69%.

More recently, on May 23rd of this year, the Belarus ruble was devalued by 56% in an effort by the country to address its overwhelming sovereign debt.

Is it any wonder then, when we look at the list of the top 15 Bitcoin-using countries, and divide the number of connected clients over the last 24 hours by the number of Internet users in each country, we get this?

It is very clear from this chart that a disproportionate number of Internet users in Belarus and Ukraine, when compared to other countries, are turning to Bitcoin as an alternative investment to protect themselves from their own currencies.

I believe this chart would remain true using data taken over a prolonged period of time, as relative Bitcoin usage in the top 15 countries has been consistent over the past six weeks.

If there is any proof that Bitcoin is being considered as a viable alternative to fiat currencies, this is it. As the European Union continues to collapse economically, it will be interesting to see how many more people begin to turn to Bitcoin to preserve their wealth.

Read more »

Bitcoin: Global Economic Freedom

Here's a Google Analytics snapshot of the visitors to my blog over the past two weeks:

What's very interesting is that there is a definite correlation between the dead spots on the map and countries identified as "repressed" by the index of economic freedom, as seen on this map, in red:

This might mean that Bitcoin is being hidden from people in economically repressed countries because of what it represents. At first I thought that the dead spots on my blog traffic map were countries with poor Internet access, but that is not always the case. Iran is a good example, where 47% of the population has access to the Internet. Ecuador is another; a country with 3.3 million Facebook subscribers that is also rated as "repressed."

See the 2011 Index of Economic Freedom, here.

Impressively, 144 of the 196 countries in the world have had a client connected to the Bitcoin network in the past 24 hours:

Country	Number of Hosts
United States	13107
Russian Federation	3452
Germany	2731
Ukraine	2461
United Kingdom	1855
Poland	1812
Canada	1788
Australia	1070
Netherlands	838
Belarus (currently experiencing hyper-inflation)	671
Sweden	651
China	641
Romania	627
Finland	533
European Union	505
France	485
Czech Republic	484
Brazil	453
Malaysia	377
Bulgaria	352
Spain	337
Serbia	274
Italy	268
Switzerland	265
Argentina	264
Denmark	257
Thailand	256
Hungary	235
Austria	225
New Zealand	221
Ireland	216
Norway	216
Bosnia and Herzegowina	200
Macedonia	190
Portugal	181
India	180
Croatia (LOCAL Name: Hrvatska)	177
Belgium	175
Israel	174
Singapore	171
South Africa	168
Lithuania	133
Mexico	132
Slovakia (SLOVAK Republic)	114
Greece	105
Colombia	95
Japan	95
Estonia	92
Philippines	91
Slovenia	89
Georgia	86
Taiwan; Republic of China (ROC)	84
Hong Kong	79
Kazakhstan	58
Chile	57
Latvia	57
Moldova Republic of	56
Viet Nam	52
Montenegro	49
Korea Republic of	46
Venezuela	43
Turkey	37
Trinidad and Tobago	36
Saudi Arabia	33
Indonesia	30
United Arab Emirates	30
Iceland	25
Jordan	25
Dominican Republic	24
Cyprus	22
Mongolia	21
Morocco	20
Luxembourg	20
Armenia	20
Egypt	19
Jamaica	19
Nigeria	17
Saint Vincent and The Grenadines	16
Sri Lanka	16
Puerto Rico	14
Uruguay	14
Azerbaijan	12
Bahamas	10
Bangladesh	9
Panama	9
Guatemala	9
Kuwait	9
Peru	9
Algeria	8
Paraguay	8
Qatar	8
Kenya	8
Ecuador	7
El Salvador	7
Costa Rica	7
Pakistan	7
Iran (ISLAMIC Republic Of)	6
Mauritius	6
Ghana	6
Nepal	6
Nicaragua	5
Oman	5
Barbados	5
Lebanon	5
Senegal	5
Malta	5
Madagascar	4
Albania	4
Guernsey	4
Brunei Darussalam	4
Tunisia	4
Kyrgyzstan	3
Bahrain	3
Honduras	3
Isle of Man	3
Cambodia	3
Syrian Arab Republic	2
Guyana	2
Netherlands Antilles	2
Belize	2
Liechtenstein	2
Macau	2
Greenland	2
Faroe Islands	2
Bolivia	2
New Caledonia	2
Antigua and Barbuda	2
Afghanistan	1
Fiji	1
Cape Verde	1
Cayman Islands	1
Guam	1
Aruba	1
Iraq	1
Namibia	1
Andorra	1
Jersey	1
Cameroon	1
Cote D'ivoire	1
Malawi	1
Gibraltar	1
Uganda	1
Grenada	1
Zambia	1

Read more »