I'm living in Indonesia currently and I haven't seen anything being sold in bitcoin or any bitcoin-related advertising anywhere.
This also seems like a big drawback:
"There is currently no offline way to purchase Bitcoin through the Indomaret stores, however, since the users will need to log into their accounts and get a code."
That said, it's interesting how many essential services are a la carte here. You buy phone minutes by finding pretty much any seller on the street, handing them some cash, and they punch in some codes into their phone for you. You then use your phone minutes ("pulsa") to buy other phone credits (different tiers of 3G service, text service, etc). When your power goes out you wander down to the market and give them cash and your meter number.
This is probably a byproduct of a lack of banking and consumer credit infrastructure for most people here. Can bitcoin / other cryptocurrencies change that? I'm skeptical because bitcoin/etc don't solve the consumer credit problem. And if someone's going to go through the ropes to set up an account on a bitcoin wallet service and deposit money into it at the market, they're also likely to be able to do the same with a banking service.
So there's the credit problem (everything must be paid up front) but then there's the deposit problem. If the phone company or the electrical company just had my <whatever> ID and could withdraw from it, I wouldn't have to pay them every time the thing ran out. And I'm not really sure bitcoin/etc really solves the deposit problem here, either.
> bitcoin/etc don't solve the consumer credit problem.
True. Bitcoin should be compared to debit cards instead of credit cards. It isn't a credit-based system. The things Bitcoin is good for though (in its current stage) are more specialized, like paying someone the equivalent of $5 in Nicaragua.
> And if someone's going to go through the ropes to set up an account on a bitcoin wallet service and deposit money into it at the market, they're also likely to be able to do the same with a banking service.
Bitcoin wallets are far easier to create than bank accounts. It's by design that so few people in the world have a bank account, but anyone with an internet connection can get a Bitcoin wallet.
> Bitcoin wallets are far easier to create than bank accounts.
That might be so, but transferring real-world money into one (a requirement until value stabilizes †) is not nearly as simple.
> It's by design that so few people in the world have a bank account, but anyone with an internet connection can get a Bitcoin wallet.
This reads a little funny when you remember that far fewer people in the world have a Bitcoin wallet. Could this be a mere matter of implementation of the design?
† IDR-USD moved 1.6% in the past month, Bitcoin-USD moved 19%
That sounds like a fair question but could equally be disingenuous.
Is the rate of lack of use of bank accounts ever likely to be public knowledge? There's zero incentive on the banks' side to publicise that kind of information.
If it's not publicly available then your question sounds quite loaded.
> Is the rate of lack of use of bank accounts ever likely to be public knowledge? There's zero incentive on the banks' side to publicise that kind of information.
Public authorities can estimate this (FDIC in the U.S. has done so) and general trends should be evident (if half of previously unbanked Indians get bank accounts we won't need banks to tell us).
But fair - just the rate of Bitcoin wallet creation then? Maybe compare to global/country population growth.
Thanks! For comparison, Indonesia's population has grown by around 2-3 million people per year over the last two decades; India's by around 17 million people per year; and the world's rate as a whole is about 70 million per year.
Those are absolute numbers. From 1 million to 5 million is a 500% increase. I doubt any nation has seen anywhere close to a 500% increase in their population numbers.
> Bitcoin wallets are far easier to create than bank accounts.
What's the recommended wallet software to use these days that doesn't need tens of gigabytes of blockchain storage? All of the non-full-blockchain clients seem shady to varying degrees.
SPV doesn't seem like the right approach. I'd like to see full blockchain hash verification, just not starting from the very beginning of the chain. Why not download the hash of a more recent block and verify the chain starting from there, periodically throwing away old blocks in favor of a single hash?
This also seems like a big drawback:
"There is currently no offline way to purchase Bitcoin through the Indomaret stores, however, since the users will need to log into their accounts and get a code."
That said, it's interesting how many essential services are a la carte here. You buy phone minutes by finding pretty much any seller on the street, handing them some cash, and they punch in some codes into their phone for you. You then use your phone minutes ("pulsa") to buy other phone credits (different tiers of 3G service, text service, etc). When your power goes out you wander down to the market and give them cash and your meter number.
This is probably a byproduct of a lack of banking and consumer credit infrastructure for most people here. Can bitcoin / other cryptocurrencies change that? I'm skeptical because bitcoin/etc don't solve the consumer credit problem. And if someone's going to go through the ropes to set up an account on a bitcoin wallet service and deposit money into it at the market, they're also likely to be able to do the same with a banking service.
So there's the credit problem (everything must be paid up front) but then there's the deposit problem. If the phone company or the electrical company just had my <whatever> ID and could withdraw from it, I wouldn't have to pay them every time the thing ran out. And I'm not really sure bitcoin/etc really solves the deposit problem here, either.