Luis Buenaventura is a co-founder and head of product at Rebit. But beyond all the pontificating there is still the practical implementation that has yet to be sorted out.
Our startup is a homespun company operating out of the Philippines, which is the third-largest receiver of remittances in the world. The numbers are compelling: The United States is the single-largest source of remittances for both countries, but for Mexico it accounts for 98 percent of the total volume, whereas with the Philippines it accounts for a little over 30 percent.
In reality, a significant although hitherto unknown amount is simply funds being routed via nostro bank accounts from the Middle Eastwhich hosts over 2. Additionally, there are 40 other countries currently hosting at least 10, Filipinos respectively, an international pageantry which also includes Canada, Malaysia, Australia, Japan and the United Kingdom.
It is however possible to provide a very compelling alternative to a small subsection of their customers. These services accept bitcoin from overseas, convert it into pesos, dinars or shillings, then deliver those funds to the final beneficiary via a variety of domestic transfer methods. A customer in Hong Kong needs to convert their HKD into BTC before sending it to the last-mile service, and one could make a reasonably profitable business out of performing that service for them.
Indeed, this is already happening organically. This has never been possible before without a centralized intermediary traditionally: When you describe it that way, the process seems straightforward. Operating as on-ramps, they must have access to large amounts of bitcoin that they can purchase in real time. Buying bitcoin on-demand is the only way to reduce volatility risk, as holding the cryptocurrency has not proven to be a financially sound strategy over these past 12 months.
Access to an exchange with locally available pay-in methods and low trading fees is key here. In Europe, Bitstamp and Kraken. In Australia, Coinjar and Independent Reserve. In the Middle East, Igot. The list goes on. Bitcoin volatility 2013 ford focus remittance volumes in the low hundred BTCs daily, a single broker with good connections can often sell over-the-counter quickly enough to turn a small profit, or at least bitcoin volatility 2013 ford focus even.
As the service volume grows however, automation in the form of trading bots that interact with the international exchanges will be necessary to keep ahead of volatility.
Between the two of them, the Philippines and Indonesia receive remittances from over 50 different jurisdictions. As each new inward corridor comes online, the incoming bitcoin volume spikes. Additionally, the off-ramps need to be connected to the various domestic remittance bitcoin volatility 2013 ford focus in their respective countries.
In the Philippines, there are more pawnshops than ATMs, and as such, pawnshops are more frequently used as cash-out methods than banks. In Indonesia, a combination of banks and the post office appear to be the preferred strategies. In India, the extremely popular and completely informal money transfer system of hawala implies that your cash pickup point could be anything from a bitcoin volatility 2013 ford focus store to a travel agency.
The costs of these licenses tend to vary wildly from country to country. A handful of companies provide KYC-as-a-service at fairly reasonable costs IdentityMind is one that bitcoin volatility 2013 ford focus on bitcoin startupswhich alleviates that overhead somewhat. Imagine if every country had one of these loosely coupled but fully interoperable bitcoin remittance brokerages, each one acting as both an on-ramp and an off-ramp onto the global network.
No centralized intermediary needs to exist in bitcoin volatility 2013 ford focus to make this happen; each business is autonomous and settles all debts with bitcoin in real time. The numbers Our startup is a homespun company operating out of the Philippines, which is the third-largest receiver of remittances in the world. Given those parameters, what kind of bitcoin remittance business can we build? The mechanics At their core, all bitcoin remittance startups are brokerages.
Although sometime issues arise, according to the user feedback the support team handles all problems quickly and diligently. Today Iвve learnt more in 15 minutes than in the past two weeks combined. 09320020 0. It's that simple. The task is to purchase and simultaneously sell the same or sufficiently similar types of assets.