Fri Dec 18, 2015 8:14 pm

I completely agree with you.



I live in a third world country with absolutely terrible internet connectivity (when compared to pretty much everywhere else). It is slow, expensive and unreliable. It is all part of the fun of living in Belize.



I'll tell you this much: I don't think there are many local people here who are going to use bitcoin for peer to peer payments with the current transaction price. They are going to use paper, not only because they trust it more and because they understand the value of the belize dollar - but also because it is free to transfer from person to person. Velocity of money is extremely high here - when someone gets paid at the end of the day, 9 times out of 10 the money will be gone before bedtime. Everything is cash, I don't even have a local bank account here and I never miss it. I pay my rent, electricity, internet, water, car insurance, taxes... everything in cash. When they need to send money to the other side of the country, then bitcoin would be useful. When sending money abroad, in this part of the world, it may be the single best solution for the unbanked part of the population. But none of that matters, because they are not going to get on board at the moment, because it is not a useful currency for daily transactions.



If you remove the on-ramp, you break the system. These transaction fees, these block size limitations, are barriers to entry.



Nobody here (ok, me) is going to have a copy of the entire blockchain on their computer. Most people here do not own a computer, they own a cellphone and (surprisingly often) a smart phone. They are not going to care how big the blockchain is, because they are not going to be interacting with it directly. SPV wallets are the solution they need. They are going to care how cheap the transfer is (preferably free) and how quickly they can spend it (preferably immediately). If it is not cheap, and not fast, then it is inferior to a piece of paper from their perspective.



Come on, western world! Get out of your ivory tower. Don't pretend that you want bitcoin to succeed in the third world by crippling the characteristics that make it blossom here (free, fast, reliable, predictable) and emphasizing the characteristics that nobody here cares about (size of a block nobody is ever going to see here).