I must be a criminal then lol. Banks are a pain in the ass to deal with. Bitcoin is a very practical and easy way to move large amounts of money around. That's why a lot of people use it. We pay our taxes when transacting it just the same. If you don't use Bitcoin, great, but don't make assumptions about those of us who do.
> Banks are a pain in the ass to deal with. Bitcoin is a very practical and easy way to move large amounts of money around.
There is no way you will convince me that setting up and using Bitcoin for daily transactions, all on your own wallet with your keys etc., is “easy” or any less of a “pain in the ass” than using a regular modern bank is on a daily basis. That’s even ignoring the baseline tech literacy one needs to have to get set up.
It’s a dead horse at this point but “practical” also comes at odds with bitcoin’s volatility.
As a US citizen who has lived for multiple years in Vietnam, I can guarantee to you that using Bitcoin is infinitely easier than dealing with the VN banking system. Forget the legal/identity aspects, just the language and cultural barriers alone are a huge pain in the arse.
I find it hard to believe you are doing even half your daily transactions without converting to fiat. I also don’t know how you can wait a few minutes for a transaction to clear potentially dozens of times in a single day. So my guess is you largely deal with dong regardless of how you store your wealth.
This just sounds like a quick sound bite where the day to day realities would tell a more nuanced story.
If it were more convenient, then more people would be doing it. There is nothing convenient about setting up a bitcoin wallet and converting your money back-and-forth between it dozens of times a week, if not a day. This is especially difficult without the regular use of exchanges, which many crypto advocates will try to dissuade you from storing any crypto on, because you are functionally just using a bank again at that point and exposing yourself. “Not your keys not your crypto,” plus another online account to get hacked.
Being your own bank is a ton of work and most people don’t want to deal with that.
You're stuck on bitcoin, there are other cryptos far more suited to these things, like USDC/USDT. I only mentioned bitcoin because, even with the complexities of it, it is still easier than dealing with VN banks. That's how hard it is to deal with.
This is not a sound bite at all. More people ARE doing it, you just don't have any personal visibility into it. TONS of viets living abroad send money back and forth all the time. Money remittance is a huge global industry and the existing solutions all suck. KYC and fees are the two general major issues for people who just want to send money to their families.
Expats, like me, have an even harder time. Language and cultural issues often get the in way. If you're a nomad who works online and doesn't have a 'regular' job... you're out of the system and hard for the banking system to deal with. Try walking into a bank where literally nobody speaks english and open an account.
In Vietnam, there is also something that the US doesn't have much of. A black market for funds. I can send USDC to Vietnam and a local there will convert it to VND for a very small fee and zero hassle.
These are all things that based on your comments, don't impact you. That doesn't mean they aren't valid or that the usecase is moot. Try walking in others shoes for a bit before you jump to conclusions about things.
I have to ask: Do you think it's reasonable to expect even 10% of people to set up multiple wallets for all their coins and have a system in place for constant conversion to the fiat currency of where they are for daily transactions? Because you keep glossing over/ignoring this serious sticking point. Setting up a crypto wallet and having your systems in place is not an easy task for most people - especially when most of us go weeks (or longer) without seeing a single vendor who takes crypto. Being your bank is a lot of work and if you forget your password (who does that right?) you lose your money.
>This is not a sound bite at all. More people ARE doing it, you just don't have any personal visibility into it. TONS of viets living abroad send money back and forth all the time.
Do you have any numbers? "More" and "TONS" are, to be blunt, meaningless. And we all know the value of anecdotes.
>Expats, like me, have an even harder time. Language and cultural issues often get the in way. If you're a nomad who works online and doesn't have a 'regular' job... you're out of the system and hard for the banking system to deal with. Try walking into a bank where literally nobody speaks english and open an account.
If you move to a country like Vietnam and don't have a functional grasp of the language, you have way more problems than simply banking. Your expecting to be serviced at a Vietnamese bank while speaking english is the problem, not modern banking. Cryptocurrency does not solve language barriers any better or worse than other currencies do.
>In Vietnam, there is also something that the US doesn't have much of. A black market for funds. I can send USDC to Vietnam and a local there will convert it to VND for a very small fee and zero hassle.
Is this legal? Because this is just saying "crypto is great for violating the law." I'm not saying it's a good or fair system, that legality = moral, but this does not build your case like you think it does.
>Try walking in others shoes for a bit before you jump to conclusions about things.
I don't have a lack of imagination/empathy and find the insinuation a bit insulting. I can see why it's good for you. But to try and fit your very specific shoes on even 10% of the 7bill people on this earth, to graft your needs and solutions on to them and say "this is more convenient and better in most ways," does not make sense to me.
> If you move to a country like Vietnam and don't have a functional grasp of the language, you have way more problems than simply banking.
I did it, don't know the language at all. Spent years driving around on a motorbike in some of the most remote areas of the country, where nobody speaks English and heck, some speak totally different dialects of Vietnamese (there are dozens of the dialects).
Banking really was the toughest thing I had to deal with there. No money, no honey.
> Is this legal?
There are all sorts of money exchange businesses there. It is super common.
> But to try and fit your very specific shoes on even 10% of the 7bill people on this earth,
No, what you're saying is that crypto HAS to be valuable for 10% of the earth in order for it to be useful or valid.
My argument is that it is just for the people who need it.
