Here are the steps you need to take to move money with crypto"currency":
1. Establish a presence at an exchange (you need to do this only once)
2. The receiver needs to establish presence at their exchange (every receiver of yours need to do this)
3. Transfer money to the exchange
4. Buy coins and move them and the receiver exchanges back them to money
5. The receiver needs to move money from the exchange to their back account
Reminder: you want to transfer money and crypto"currency" is merely a vehicle to do this. And so turns out the hard part is #3 and #5 -- integrating into existing banking systems and #4 is completely superflous. For example, wise.com (nee transferwise) solves the same problem except without the receiver needing to do this nightmarish rigmarole.
Not trusting the middle man would require the entire world to switch to some crypto"currency" and this is completely unfeasible with the current ones.
That includes steps that you shouldn't. I.e. to transfer money via bank, I wouldn't include "get a job to earn some money".
You don't want to transfer money, you want to transfer value. If the recipient can use the crypto currency to buy something else, they don't need an exchange.
Here's my very simple setup: have a bunch of mbtc sit in a wallet. Open the wallet. Insert the password. Insert address and amount. Insert the password again. Done.
I can do the same with a bank, but it takes much longer (i.e. days instead of seconds or minutes) unless the recipient is at the same bank, or I pay extra and they're in the same network, and I need to rely on the bank to allow my payment. Want to buy porn, drugs, or want to gamble your hard earned money away? Good luck using your VISA or PayPal for that.
There's plenty of potential in crypto, it doesn't need to replace any and all usecases of banking to be useful.
No, this is a crypto"currency" fanboi's version, sorry.
Everyone wants to transfer money except a vanishingly small percentage of the population who wants to use these things. Aside from a rounding error, no one even understands what they are or how to use them. I get invoiced for services in money, I pay my taxes in money. There's nothing else.
This has been the favorite poster child of bitcoin shills but it's been, again, thirteen years and it still doesn't work so much that there has not even been a credible attempt making it work.
"It doesn't work"? I've bought stuff and paid with bitcoin just yesterday. It worked fine. That you and a majority of the population have no use for it doesn't mean that it doesn't work. It works for the people who use it, and it solves problems for them.
You're not one of them. That's fine, not everything has to include you to be useful.
I mean international money transfer using Bitcoin doesn't work. Currently Wise leads in the international money transfer business and something even better Bitcoin should have arisen if the crypto bros' claims were true -- but there's nothing.
My landlord won't accept bitcoin either, but I'm perfectly fine with just using my bank account to let them take the money out of my account. It's easy, convenient and just works, they even have an account at the same bank I have mine.
I also occasionally spend money at international businesses on things PayPal, VISA and MC aren't fond of, so short of putting bills into an envelope and sending them it's difficult to do. Crypto solves that for me. It's quick and I don't need anyone's approval of the industry I'm spending money on. It's like cash for local shopping, minus the large acceptance. I'd love to see more businesses use crypto, and for it to be less roller-coaster-y, and to have less energy waste etc, but it is what it is, and it still works for me.
> I also occasionally spend money at international businesses on things PayPal, VISA and MC aren't fond of, so short of putting bills into an envelope and sending them it's difficult to do.
Not at all, a simple wire works , yes , even for porn.
Sure, it does. But it takes a lot more time to arrive (which is the whole reason of existence of SOFORT, which logs into your banking account, assures you have the funds and triggers the transfer and then tells the recipient that it's safe to assume the money will arrive in a day or three) and you need the recipient's bank details, which is a problem in the US, because of identity theft and dumb regulation around it.
That's getting better, and some day it will probably work globally and near-instant, but we're not there yet.
i thought your counterparty doesn't need to be on the exchange since you're just sending funds to a hex address? i thought that it's trivial to lose funds b/c of this?
1. Establish a presence at an exchange (you need to do this only once)
2. The receiver needs to establish presence at their exchange (every receiver of yours need to do this)
3. Transfer money to the exchange
4. Buy coins and move them and the receiver exchanges back them to money
5. The receiver needs to move money from the exchange to their back account
Reminder: you want to transfer money and crypto"currency" is merely a vehicle to do this. And so turns out the hard part is #3 and #5 -- integrating into existing banking systems and #4 is completely superflous. For example, wise.com (nee transferwise) solves the same problem except without the receiver needing to do this nightmarish rigmarole.
Not trusting the middle man would require the entire world to switch to some crypto"currency" and this is completely unfeasible with the current ones.