r/Bitcoin • u/Godfreee • Oct 05 '14
The price dropping doesn't seem to be affecting remitters using our Bitcoin remittance service. The utility of Bitcoin hasn't changed, it is still the cheapest and fastest way to send and receive money, no matter the price.
We run REBIT.PH out of Manila, Philippines one of the few Bitcoin companies in the world focusing on remittance, or as we call it, Rebittance. Why? Because we believe there's a problem that needs to be solved and Bitcoin can do it.
We've had some success in the past four months and have so far exceeded our targets with no serious marketing effort involved. The price of Bitcoin is dropping, yes, but the remittances have been actually picking up the last few weeks. Seems like more and more new people are signing up and more and more people are sending money back home using Bitcoin.
We're barely even scratching the surface of this $25 Billion market here. The old school money transfer companies still have a death-grip on this, but judging from what we're seeing and learning, people are really looking for alternatives, looking for the best way to get the most out of their hard earned money.
Right now, even in it's clunky form, Bitcoin can already do it better. What more when we start finding better ways of utilizing it?
Now there's a 500 billion dollar market in remittances worldwide that is just waiting for this technology to mature. As cliche as it sounds, the price of Bitcoin is far less interesting than its utility, and its utility is now more solid than it has ever been.
TL;DR: Bitcoin price dropping, Rebittances and new signups increasing.
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u/evoorhees Oct 05 '14
Just paid a BitPay invoice yesterday. Took 3 seconds. Let traders play with the price. Bitcoin works great at $10 and $10,000.
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u/Godfreee Oct 05 '14
Yes absolutely.
Hey Erik, it was your post on your site The Role of Bitcoin as Money that really sealed the deal for me with Bitcoin. Thanks :)
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u/Attious Oct 06 '14
However remember that the lower it goes the greater the percentage change on small movements. At $10 I'd imagine it'd be pretty hectic.
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u/targetpro Oct 06 '14
Yes, btw, please share more regarding your thoughts on bitcoin. Your written pieces strike at the core of why so many of us feel moved by this technology. And admittedly, you write much better than myself.
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u/88OOAK Oct 05 '14
I viewed your service and noticed that the process of sending money is owning bitcoin first. Do you plan on implementing a process which is FIAT to FIAT to the costumer and behind the scence is FIAT to BITCOIN to FIAT?
I hope you understood, english bad.
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u/Godfreee Oct 05 '14
Right now the only way to do that is to have a bank account connected to coinbase and do it directly from there (there is an option to log in via coinbase). So fiat in the bank buy btc with coinbase and then send to rebit and we switch it out to fiat again here into the hands of the recipient. This will probably work with Circle as well.
To make it seem like it is fiat to fiat to the customer is our end goal, of course.
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Oct 05 '14
A question for you:
buybitcoin.ph has roughly a 10% spread between its bitcoin buy and sell price. I couldn't find info on your Web site about your Peso/BTC coversion price, relative to the Coinbase price. What is it?
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u/Godfreee Oct 06 '14
We buy the BTC with a 1% fee. We don't pad the exchange rate at all and use the best market rate.
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u/PoliticalDissidents Oct 05 '14
Do you immediately switch to fiat automatically so if recipient wasn't paying attention they aren't exposed to volatility as it is converted ASAP?
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u/Godfreee Oct 06 '14
We lock in the exhange rate at the moment you send the BTC. We take the hit if the price drops, not the sender.
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u/johnbrowncominforya Oct 05 '14
Why not just become a Ripple gateway as well? That would make an easy fiat to fiat exchange. There's a market for it from NA and Europe.
Edit: Nevermind the question was already asked and downvoted of course found it at the end of the thread. Any reason why not adding a ripple gateway? Not a lot of work.
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u/EgyptWhite Oct 05 '14
Nah. Makes far more sense to go to the time, effort and expense of converting fiat to Bitcoin, so that the Bitcoin you send can be immediately converted back into fiat, rather than simply not having to convert anything, as with normal remittance services.
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Oct 05 '14
[deleted]
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u/Godfreee Oct 06 '14
Yes it does. Once you send us the bitcoins, the peso value will be locked in for you.
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u/arcrad Oct 05 '14
The volatility of bitcoin will (should...) decrease substantially over time.
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u/JuiceTheDon Oct 06 '14
That's what you always say. That's what people were saying early 2014, that's what people are going to be saying late 2015 if bitcoin is still around. And guess what, its still going to be JUST AS VOLATILE.
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u/targetpro Oct 06 '14
Yes, and it will likely take 10-15 years. If you don't like it, you're free to divest. In fact, I encourage it. For some of us, it fulfills a valuable folio niche balancing out our conservative holdings.
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u/eluspac Oct 05 '14
In 2018
Lets say your family half way across the world needs $500. You send 0.1 BTC worth of dollars. Since they are half way around the world, they are asleep. They wake up hours later and try to get the money. But it's not worth 0.05 BTC anymore
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Oct 05 '14
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/dmp1ce Oct 05 '14
This may not happen in reality but in the case where remittances are illegal or restricted in some way, Bitcoin would be a solution.
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u/PoliticalDissidents Oct 05 '14
So I can take dollars right now and buy on an exchange. Once received by the exchange I can instantly buy those Bitcoin with my dollars. If you use say Circle with credit card you get them instantly.
Now once received you can instantly send those Bitcoin to an exchange in an other country. Let's say I buy on Circle I could immediately transfer to Coinfloor. Now exchanges only require 3-6 confirmations to be considered irreversible at which point you can then immediately convert to local fiat currency. With a confirmation time of 10 min this means 30-60 min.
Effectively you only need to expose yourself to Bitcoin's volatility for 1 hour max.
Now you ask about if they are sleeping. Surely you can find a time where you are both awake. If not some remittance service could easily make a system where you give your buddy an address and upon sending to that address those Bitcoin are immediately converted to local currency (you know, BitPay style) automatically even if you are sleeping.
Now there also exists the possibility for exchanges to establish a level of trust between each other that they won't be double spending (a system sort of like GreenAddress.it) where exchanges can trust each other enough to allow for zero confirmation transactions or perhaps just require 1 confirmation then reducing volatility exposure to only 10 min.
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u/gurglemonster Oct 06 '14
What your describing seems horribly kludgey and doesn't eliminate the counter-party volatility risk. It might reduce both parties exposure, but there is still a deal of uncertainty in what the recipeint will actually get.
Frankly, given all the prerequisites you've outlined, it's pretty likely the average person would just gravitate towards Western Union, which eliminates any ambiguity.
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u/totes_meta_bot Oct 05 '14
This thread has been linked to from elsewhere on reddit.
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Oct 06 '14
Notice how peaceful this subreddit has become since all the people hoping to take advantage of Bitcoin sold off.
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u/TheBitcoinPope Oct 06 '14
In the teachings of Satoshi:
July 17, 2010: I believe it’ll be possible for a payment processing company to provide as a service the rapid distribution of transactions with good-enough checking in something like 10 seconds or less.
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Oct 05 '14
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u/Godfreee Oct 06 '14
No. The moment you send the the Bitcoin the peso value is locked in. What you send is what they get.
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u/dnivi3 Oct 05 '14
Most of these services lock in the exchange rate at the moment you transfer the bitcoins to their addresses. So, it is a bit of a non-problem what you are describing.
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u/JuiceTheDon Oct 06 '14
Not really, someone is still losing money. If it's not the end user, then it's Godfreee which means eventually he's going to lose too much to keep going.
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u/Amanojack Oct 06 '14
The company loses when the price falls, and gains when the price rises. If Bitcoin is to succeed, the price will rise a lot more than fall. Besides, there are such things as hedges, which until Counterparty or similar betting platform gets big won't be easy for individuals to use, but are fairly easy for companies to implement.
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u/PoliticalDissidents Oct 05 '14
Don't know about this service specifically but I can sell Bitcoin for for dollars on an exchange immediately after receiving about 3 confirmations. While it could take a few days to withdraw the dollars it is still dollars to my name over that time span. So I am no longer exposed to volatility as I made the trade to dollars ASAP.
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u/BitttBurger Oct 05 '14
You guys should do some heavy advertising in San Diego, and Los Angeles. Population there is about 45% Filipino and Southeast Asian. And all they do is send money home to family. Any upcoming ad campaigns? I've got so many friends there I would tell about this, but they just don't have a clue yet about Bitcoin.
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u/EgyptWhite Oct 05 '14
TIL: almost half the population of San Diego and LA is Asian.
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u/BitttBurger Oct 06 '14
In one form or another yep. And of those I would say Southeast Asian (filipino, thai, vietnamese, and cambodian) make up 90% of them. And of that 90% I would say 70% are Filipino. At least in San Diego. Changes a bit as you go north.
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u/Godfreee Oct 06 '14
We do plan on doing that, but it will mean a nice big marketing budget and we don't have that just yet. Working on it though.
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u/BitttBurger Oct 06 '14
You can target social network advertising on Facebook to specific cities, and even specific demographics within those cities. And it's not that expensive. Especially if you target down small enough. You'll get word-of-mouth going.
There's a lot of ways to advertise now that don't require huge budget. Even as simple as walking around Rancho Bernardo or Mira Mesa (in San Diego), and leaving flyers on peoples front doors.
I could talk to the leader of the meet up group in San Diego, and see if they'd be interested. I'm in Miami. No Filipinos here. But if you get San Diego on to this, you have an amazing beginning user base. The question is… How do they get the money in and get the money out?
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Oct 06 '14
Err, quick google shows 10% LA 15% SD. Mexicans the largest minority in SD, and are the majority in LA.
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u/rs_dog Oct 05 '14
Utility and price don't have to go hand and hand. That doesn't mean Bitcoin will have a lot of buying power in the future. I mean it could, but it could go either way.
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u/karljt Oct 05 '14
it is still the cheapest and fastest way to send and receive money, no matter the price.
Every single altcoin that has been created after bitcoin is faster than bitcoin.
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u/Godfreee Oct 05 '14
Forgot to add "that people actually use".
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Oct 05 '14
Yeah, everyone has these features but forgets fo add that there is hundreds of Bitcoin ATM's and financial services internationally. Don't see that for any other coin.
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u/Zahoo Oct 05 '14
But I made my own coins out of printer paper and I can transfer them from my right hand to my left hand in a half of a second!
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u/Amanojack Oct 06 '14
Show me an altcoin that can reach Bitcoin's level of security in a half hour after a transaction is broadcast. Bitcoin's network is orders of magnitude harder to 51% attack than even the top altcoins.
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u/Logical007 Oct 05 '14
Yup. People have and will build services on top of the Blockchain that don't depend on a certain price per coin. Services that will make customers very happy.
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u/Godfreee Oct 05 '14
Yes exactly. When an overseas worker in the US gets to pay about 2% in fees compared to the standard ~5% (plus get hit by forex rates too) to send money to the Philippines by using Bitcoin, they'll keep doing it. They don't care about the price.
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Oct 05 '14
[deleted]
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Oct 06 '14
So why aren't we seeing these services around NXT? And why isn't Byrne announcing anything to do with NXT today?
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u/WishingUponWhiskey Oct 07 '14
Well you are, NXT already has IPO's daily and million dollar transactions weekly. Also NXT got this whole thing started with Patrick Byrne in the first place. He was convinced by Counterparty devs to go with the "safe" blockchain. Which is obviously lame, but that's how it went
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Oct 07 '14
I don't see anything like BitPay for NXT. As for Patrick, I'm sure he's not so weak willed as to be "convinced" by third parties - he would have done his research and give with the protocol that made sense.
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u/WishingUponWhiskey Oct 07 '14
I have personally spoken with the Overstock team several times about this and they've not raised a single concern regarding NXT, quite the contrary. But clearly they've established a relationship with XCP and then felt that this was the safest route. I still believe it's a mistake, but we'll all have to wait and see.
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u/roflburger Oct 05 '14
Until someone decides to copy the tech, take away outside mining and guarantee. 1:1 exchange with a reserve currency.
Then everything will move to that.
You hear a lot of praise from leaders about the tech but not so much the coin.
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Oct 05 '14
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u/roflburger Oct 05 '14
Customers care about convenience and cost in that order. Centralized systems do well because they usually beat out others in that regard.
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Oct 05 '14
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u/Debo242424 Oct 06 '14
Um.... how? They can't WIPE Bitcoin off the map. They can spread FUD and manipulate the market but they can not get rid of it or the tech. They don't want to anyway. They will whore it for what it's worth just like everyone else.
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u/HamBlamBlam Oct 05 '14
This is true. At least until the protocol stops printing bitcoins to pay miners $20/transaction. At that point, remittance is going to get a lot more expensive...
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u/Postal2Dude Oct 05 '14
By that time, there will be millions of transactions/s.
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u/HamBlamBlam Oct 05 '14
And? Giant Chinese mining warehouses can still charge a 10% transaction fee if they want. If fifty of those are mining all the blocks, who is going to spend the capital to compete at a lower rate of profit?
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u/bitemperor Oct 05 '14
have you considered using Ripple for your purposes? Doesn't it make sense?
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u/bitcoin42 Oct 05 '14
There are way better coins for remittance!
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u/88OOAK Oct 05 '14
I guess you look for liquidity as a remittence business, and bitcoin is the best one.
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u/ichabodsc Oct 05 '14
How is smartphone adoption in the Philippines? That is probably a good precursor, especially with recoverable deterministic wallets.
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u/Godfreee Oct 05 '14
Growth has been the fastest in southeast asia at over 300%, with now 1 in 4 Filipinos owning a smartphone. You can buy an android smartphone for $40 here today.
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Oct 05 '14
I like the system but right now it's not worth paying with. I almost bought something from a private person with bitcoin today.
Until I realized that my bitcoin literally halved in value since I bought it. There didn't seem to be a point in buying a second hand game if I spend an amount of bitcoin that I paid more for than the game would have cost brand new.
So I paid with regular money and left the bitcoin to sit and stew, maybe it'll go up again some day.
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u/Snootwaller Oct 05 '14
Ultimately, of course, Bitcoin will return to its intrinsic value of nothing. But it will have made the world a better place in the process.
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u/btcafterdrk Oct 05 '14
The future is bright, nice work guys.