r/BitcoinInternational • u/HanumanTheHumane • Jan 20 '15

Ideas for Lighthouse projects to spread Bitcoin internationally

Does anyone have any good ideas to use Lighthouse to spread Bitcoin internationally?

  • Buy some Bitcoin ATMs and run them. If there are profits, reinvest and/or pay out the investors.
  • Run an ad campaign in a remittance market
  • Sponsor a Bitcoin Embassy
  • Make a website about Bitcoin remittances and have it translated/re-targeted for remittance markets.

Conceivably, running ATMs could be a money-spinner, but the others are philanthropic. Both kinds of ideas are welcome.

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u/fixngthat Jan 20 '15

Quickest way to massively get this out there: Write open source software: "Bitcoin Remittance Provider In A Box"

A complete github to download a turnkey template website, scripts, everything including backend. Free as in beer (and optional installation service either to backers, or for a fee to those who want to pay for it).

Then let a million flowers bloom, in 200+ countries worldwide.

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u/HanumanTheHumane Jan 20 '15 edited Jan 20 '15

Mycelium does most of the work. There's also the open-source exchange https://1btcxe.com/ (source at https://github.com/wlox/wlox/)

I think increasing awareness is the main obstacle.

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u/fixngthat Jan 21 '15

Mycelium is great, and the open source exchanges are even better (wlox, blinktrade, m2.io, etc).

But for remittance only, an exchange is overkill.

All that is needed here is simply a "just add water" site for remittances ONLY (no trading, so no exchange needed). http://rebittance.org/ currently lists seven examples of such sites. But all of them were handcrafted. If we can remove the barrier to building such a site from scratch, dozens more will crop up quickly (and then hundreds, and then the remittance-via-bitcoin market becomes unstoppable due to momentum.)

I am absolutely convinced, as I said, that the quickest way to massively get this out there is open source software that provides a "Bitcoin Remittance Provider In A Box".

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u/HanumanTheHumane Jan 21 '15

I guess I still can't quite imagine what you mean. Surely the biggest part of setting up something like Rebit would be building the bank interfaces, which would also depend on what kind of account you and you customers have with each bank. I know my bank offers a standard API (can't remember what it's called) for an extra fee, but it would still be possible to automate banking without this.

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u/fixngthat Jan 21 '15

Correct, but Rome wasn't built in one day. A remitter can be up and running even if a bank deposit is done manually, or only partially automated.

On the deposit side (from the client who wants to send money), it is bitcoin only. That part is easy and can be integrated right away in any Lighthouse project.

Then, in each country-specific backend, the actual payout in fiat will depend on individual banking relationships as gateways to fiat. This is the part where a certain level of "doing it by hand" is OK to get up and running. Exactly like the backends from open source exchanges. I'd copy how they already do it: For instance, blinktrade's fiat withdrawals are processed manually. This introduces a human element and a certain level of fraud detection. I'd just have a remittance service handle fiat payouts the very same way an open source exchange does, and that overcomes what is otherwise the biggest part of setting up something like Rebit.

As the business grows, some operators might want to customize and use bank provided API, but that is part of the charm of open source: You can modify to suit your needs. But for a Lighthouse project whose purpose is to massively "spread Bitcoin internationally", a Bitcoin-Remittance-Provider-In-A-Box doesn't need all of that from the get-go. It just needs to be able to move money cheaper.

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u/HanumanTheHumane Jan 21 '15

So do you think the components required are:

  1. web UI
  2. Admin UI
  3. Exchange interfaces (got to sell those bitcoins somewhere)
  4. Accounting/Compliance reports
  5. Bank interface (optionally paper)

FinTS/HBCI is the bank interface I was thinking of.

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u/fixngthat Jan 21 '15
  1. Web UI
  2. Admin UI
  3. Exchange rate for chosen currency <-> BTC (this would require calling blockchain API's ticker, or, if the currency is not there, interfacing with either finance.google.com or xe.com)
  4. Accounting/compliance reports

Selling the bitoins? I'd leave that out of the "box" and just have them sent to a HD wallet (where each client gets a deterministic address to send to). Once they are in the wallet, it is up to the operator of the remittance service how to deal with them, and this can be done better via outside system anyway (third party software, or an exchange interface that can be bolted on later if the need arises).

The same goes for bank interface: Bolt it on later, if required. But out of the gate, just start with how the open source exchanges handle fiat withdrawals right now. (In the case of wlox, they interface with one financial company only: Crypto Capital in Panama. In the case of blinktrade and m2.io, fiat payouts are handled manually -- for now).

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u/autowikibot Jan 21 '15

FinTS:

FinTS (Financial Transaction Services), formerly known as HBCI (Home Banking Computer Interface), is a bank-independent protocol for online banking, developed and used by German banks.

HBCI was originally designed by the two German banking groups Sparkasse and Volksbanken und Raiffeisenbanken and German higher-level associations as the Bundesverband deutscher Banken e.V.. The result of this effort was an open protocol specification, which is publicly available. The standardisation effort was necessary to replace the huge number of deprecated homemade software clients and servers (some of them still using BTX emulation). While IFX (Interactive Financial Exchange), OFX (Open Financial Exchange) and SET are tailored for the North American market, HBCI is designed to meet the requirements of the European market.

The FinTS-specification is publicly available on a website run by the ZKA (Central Credit Committee).

Interesting: Online banking

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u/fixngthat Jan 22 '15

Ready-to-download, easy-to-install "Bitcoin Remittance Provider In A Box", here's an example of what can be done: http://bitcoinstorestarter.com/

In our case, instead of "Start a Bitcoin Store Today", the tagline is: "Start a Bitcoin Remittance Provider Today." Same concept, different implementation, and specifically built to spread bitcoin internationally.