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Food and Cash Shortages Push Cubans Toward Permissionless Cryptocurrencies

05/07/2020 by Idelto Editor

The Nation of Cuba is dealing with a national food crisis, as Venezuela has stopped offering aid to the small island nation. Moreover, the coronavirus outbreak has caused a shortage of cash couriers called “mules” and everyday items are becoming scarcer. Amid the crisis, a number of Cubans are resorting to leveraging cryptocurrencies like bitcoin to curb inflationary pressure, and the country’s first peer-to-peer bitcoin exchange Qbita launched last April.

The Covid-19 pandemic has ravaged the Cuban economy just like it has throughout the globe. However, Cuba has been hit much harder because of the country’s socialist regime. Cuba is located in the northern Caribbean region and the state adheres to Communism and central planning. This gives the government an authoritarian position over the entire Cuban work force and the country’s means of production.

Leadership is quite tricky in Cuba, as Miguel Díaz-Canel is the President of the nation, but the people follow the rule of Raúl Castro’s guidelines. Raúl Castro is the official first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, and to this day, the first secretary is the most powerful leader in Cuba.

The country’s dealings with the coronavirus outbreak caused the island significant hardship and just recently, Venezuela has stopped offering the country assistance. The Venezuelan government used to be a lifeline for Cubans when it came to financial assistance.

The lack of help from Venezuela invoked the Communist Party to tell all Cuban residents to grow as much food as they can in order to survive. “Cuba can and must develop its program of municipal self-sustainability definitively and with urgency, in the face of the obsessive and tightened U.S. blockade and the food crisis COVID-19 will leave,” José Ramón Machado Ventura, deputy leader of the Cuban Communist Party, recently told the media.

In addition to the possible food crisis, Cubans have been seeing a shortage of “mules.” “Mules,” otherwise known as “Mulas,” are not delivering much-needed goods and cash to Cubans.

There’s an estimated 50,000 Cubans who consider themselves Mules, and they travel all around the world to bring cash and certain products. Mules account for close to half of the cash remittances in Cuba as well. Since Covid-19, however, Mules are now scarcer than the products and cash, as the outbreak has pretty much halted the Mule supply chain.

In order to curb the economic turmoil, a number of Cubans are resorting to bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptocurrencies. For instance, there are traders on the platform Localbitcoins stemming from Havana and Holguín.

A trader from San José de las Lajas sells bitcoin cash (BCH) with “no limits” for Western Union payments on the peer-to-peer exchange Local.Bitcoin.com. Further, a number of reports over the last two years show that a number of Cubans have been seeking out cryptocurrency solutions.

In September 2019, Reuters reported on Cuban residents “skirting U.S. sanctions by flocking to cryptocurrency, in order to shop online and send funds.” There is also a popular Telegram channel with thousands of Cubans called “Cubacripto,” where citizens gather to trade or discuss digital assets.

On April 23, 2020, Italian-Cuban entrepreneur, Mario Mazzola launched the country’s first peer-to-peer Bitcoin (BTC) exchange qbita.org. Mazzola has detailed that Cubans find the platform Localbitcoin’s Know Your Customer (KYC) rules too strict, and Paxful geo-blocks citizens from Cuba. Last April, Mazzola discussed the qbita launch with Decrypt.co columnist Jose Antonio Lanz.

“I think that in the future we’re going to see fewer people coming to crypto just to make some easy money,” Mazzola explained during the interview. “We’re going to see more people using Bitcoin for its true purpose: the freedom to move money and to have total control of your funds.”

Do you think cryptocurrencies like bitcoin can help with remittances and shortages? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

The post Food and Cash Shortages Push Cubans Toward Permissionless Cryptocurrencies appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Brewdog Tokyo Accepts Bitcoin Cash Payments: Local BCH Meetup Gathers to Celebrate

01/07/2020 by Idelto Editor

On July 1, 2020, the popular eatery and bar in Japan, Brewdog Tokyo, started accepting bitcoin cash payments for products and services. The establishment is the third Brewdog bar to accept bitcoin cash, as the cryptocurrency is accepted at the London and Budapest locations as well.

In order to celebrate Brewdog Tokyo supporting bitcoin cash, a number of Tokyo-based BCH Meetup members gathered at the bar on Wednesday to socialize and purchase refreshments.

The Roppongi location is officially the third Brewdog establishment that accepts bitcoin cash (BCH) for goods and services. The firm’s state-of-the-art breweries are located all around the world, and the eateries and bars are some of the most popular places to acquire craft brews.

There are Brewdog locations in Roppongi, Aberdeenshire, Brisbane, London, Budapest, Ohio, and more. The Brewdog Tokyo location follows the acceptance from locations in Budapest and London.

On Wednesday, July 1, the Tokyo Bitcoin Cash Meetup decided to host a meetup at the Brewdog Tokyo location. Around 20-25 people attended (less attendance due to Covid-19) and the members will start to have meetups weekly again.

According to an attendee, Brewdog Tokyo, located in Roppongi accepts bitcoin cash (BCH) via the Bitcoin.com Register application. Funds are then sent directly to a single address using a Bitcoin.com Wallet and owned by Brewdog.

Discussing the subject with Tokyo Bitcoin Cash Meetup co-organizer, Akane Yokoo, she explained that the group was thrilled with Brewdog Tokyo supporting BCH. “I am really glad that Brewdog Roppongi is open-minded and they decided to accept bitcoin cash (BCH) and host our meetups,” Yokoo told our newsdesk.

Yokoo also highlighted that a number of new BCH meetups are being launched in July, “which shows us that the BCH community is growing fast.” The new BCH Meetup regions will include the South Coast, U.K., Gold Coast Australia, Luxemburg, and another location in Texas as there is another meetup location in Houston, Texas.

Moreover, Yokoo explained that the other BCH Meetup community leaders are going to approach Brewdog in their own cities, in order to promote more BCH acceptance. “These use cases are great because the community can use them as an example when they approach new merchants for BCH payment adoption,” Yokoo concluded.

What do you think about Brewdog Tokyo accepting bitcoin cash for products and services? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments below.

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A Number of Hong Kong Vending Machines Support Bitcoin Cash Payments Over BTC

04/06/2020 by Idelto Editor

Just recently, cryptocurrency evangelist Roger Ver shared a video on Twitter that shows a number of vending machines in Hong Kong that accept bitcoin cash and ethereum, but not bitcoin. A bunch of people got upset at the Tweet, including the crypto-pundit Tone Vays because they couldn’t deal with the fact that onchain bitcoin transactions could not provide such services. The reason bitcoin cash is supported by these vending machines in Hong Kong is because bitcoin transaction fees are 1,931x more expensive than bitcoin cash transactions.

Hong Kong Vending Machines Choose Ethereum and Bitcoin Cash

For years now the concept of leveraging cryptocurrencies with vending machines has been a popular trend because the two ideas go hand in hand. In the early days, when bitcoin (BTC) fees were cheaper, vending machines that utilized BTC were gathering steam. News.Bitcoin.com reported on the subject back in 2016, just before BTC fees skyrocketed to $50+ per transaction at the end of 2017. The network clog and higher fees have made it so bitcoin vending machines are not realistic if they are powered by BTC transactions. There have been a few Lightning Network-powered vending and candy machines, but the Lightning Network is riddled with issues like failed transactions and a myriad of other vulnerabilities. Hardcore BTC maximalists don’t like to admit it, but in a much shorter period of time, the Ethereum blockchain handles more BTC-based offchain transactions by a long shot.

Why do these HK vending machines accept #BitcoinCash and #Ethereum but not #Bitcoin? pic.twitter.com/NosqL8ZVgP

— Roger Ver (@rogerkver) May 29, 2020

Just recently, the well known digital currency investor, Roger Ver, tweeted about a few vending machines in Hong Kong that only accept ETH and BCH. “Why do these Hong Kong vending machines accept bitcoin cash and ethereum but not bitcoin?” Ver asked his Twitter followers. The reason why cryptocurrency vending machines cannot use BTC is because it is currently 1,931.56x more expensive to transact on Bitcoin (BTC) in USD,” according to Coin Dance statistics. So let’s just say a candy bar or can of soda in the machine costs $1, and according to Billfodl’s BTC fees web portal the average transaction will cost a user between $1.23 or $1.72 per transaction. So that dollar soda would cost a person a minimum of $2.23 for an 8oz can of cola, and anyone with some brain cells knows that’s not sustainable for vending machine operations.

Maximalists Dismiss Facts, Bitcoin Network Fees Crippled a Number of Concepts

Despite the facts, the Youtuber and crypto-pundit Tone Vays busted out a logical fallacy and said: “Because you probably paid for that feature of the machine.” Vays then switched goalposts, and said that the real question was “how many transactions have they processed since that demo.” Vays didn’t get into the fact that leveraging BTC is not sustainable to run a vending machine with dynamic and unreliable transaction fees. Vays forgot to mention that vending machines are not the only projects BTC’s high fees have neutered. Bitcoin cash fees are always low and less than a U.S. penny per transaction. BCH fees even remained that way in September 2018, when the BCH chain processed 2.4 million transactions in 24-hours.

Vays and the other people who decided to dismiss simple facts, didn’t mention that coin tumbling and coinjoin applications are much harder when BTC fees are so high. A number of mixers and tumbling services that operated in the early days are hardly used these days because of BTC high network fees. On the other hand, BCH fees are super low and have allowed for projects like Cashshuffle and Cashfusion to thrive. Both of these applications continue to allow people to shuffle millions of dollars because of low transaction fees. Let’s not forget that BCH developers pioneered Cashfusion and even BTC proponents are beginning to understand it offers more privacy than traditional coinjoin practices.

The Replace-by-Fee Vulnerability and No One Wants to Use Bitcoin for Color Coin Projects These Days

Critics of Ver’s tweet forgot to mention all the great companies that dropped BTC because of expensive and unreliable transactions. Well known companies like Fiverr, Expedia, Reddit, Steam, Stripe, Paypal, and Dell all dropped BTC support over the last few years. People on the vending machine thread on Twitter did discuss zero-confirmation transactions and how BCH benefits from them. Of course, maximalists claim that zero-confirmation transactions are “unsafe,” but the chances of them being unsafe are extremely minimal. However, as far as BTC is concerned the software called replace-by-fee (RBF) is not safe for zero-confirmation transactions and double spending can happen with any amount of funds on the BTC network using RBF.

Unfortunately, people forget that even color coins (tokens) were eclipsed from the BTC chain too for the most part because of fees. This reasoning alone is likely why Tether has moved most USDT over to other blockchains instead of relying on Omni. Ethereum is BTC’s sidechain because projects like Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) have outperformed the Lightning Network.

High transaction fees and network congestion has done a lot of damage to certain ideas like micropayments as well. If you cannot purchase a $1 soda in a reasonable manner, sending micropayments of $0.10 to $0.25 is even worse. The real reason the vending machines in Hong Kong accept bitcoin cash and ethereum is because it is not sustainable to run a vending operation with BTC’s expensive and unreliable transaction fees. No more no less.

What do you think about the response to Roger Ver’s tweet? Let us know in the comments section below.

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Crypto Mining Crunch Time – Bitcoin Halving Less Than 50 Days Away While Global Economy Shudders

24/03/2020 by Idelto Editor

On or around May 13, the BTC network will see a block reward reduction as miners will go from getting 12.5 coins per block to 6.25 coins following the halving. The last time the protocol’s block reward halved was on July 9, 2016, and the global economy looked a whole lot different back then. This time around, while BTC miners see reward reductions the world’s financial system has been crumbling and the digital asset’s value is much lower than it was four weeks ago.

Also read: Countdown to Block Reward Reduction – 18 Days Until Bitcoin Cash Halving

Bitcoin Halving Countdown – 50 Days Until the Block Reward Reduction

It’s kind of hard to believe that last month BTC was trading for much higher than it is today at $10,371 per coin on February 14. Then again it’s getting easier to believe anything is possible nowadays as the entire world is fractured by economic hardships from the covid-19 pandemic. Bitcoin is now trading for $6,600 and the network is set to see a block reward reduction from 12.5 BTC per block to only 6.25 BTC in 50 days. Give or take a week or so, the protocol has halved every four years starting in 2012. The last halving was in 2016 and the one expected after April is scheduled for May 13.

Besides the price lows right now, the ongoing economic uncertainty worldwide has cast a shadow on crypto markets in general and no one’s quite sure what will happen next. For the first time since Bitcoin’s birth, the cryptocurrency is caught amidst a financial meltdown worldwide and many people believe the technology was made for this event. In the midst of the economic calamity, and no matter what the price is come May 13th, miners will get their revenues chopped in half instantly.

#Bitcoin leveraged longs are liquidated, system cleared. Traditional system did not clear because of circuit breakers, bail outs, non 24/7: who knows how many blow ups are out there?! Markets show current $5trillionUSD promised QE is not enough. Bitcoin halving in May. #DoTheMath pic.twitter.com/tdtvLBtwNV

— PlanB (@100trillionUSD) March 19, 2020

BTC miners will face other obstacles as well because Satoshi Nakamoto probably never accounted for two other SHA256 networks. In 2020 there are three high-profile blockchains that share the same SHA256 algorithm and some mining operations process blocks on all three networks. An even larger number of mining pools can be seen switching hashrate from chain to chain in hopes of gathering better profits. Roughly a month before BTC’s halving, bitcoin cash (BCH) and bitcoinsv (BSV) will see block reward reductions as well. Bitcoin miners have been doing this for quite some time and there have been various occasions where it’s more profitable to mine BCH than BTC or vice versa. Because miners follow these windows of opportunity to bounce around chain to chain, speculators believe profit fluctuations will be more drastic as each network halves.

2020 Halving Produces Uncertainty and Possible Diminished Security

Further, while a good number of BTC supporters are optimistic about the bitcoin halving, there are those who think it might not be a big deal. Longtime analyst and trader Peter Brandt who has 334K followers on Twitter recently said that the halving might be overemphasized. Brandt tweeted that the bitcoin halving was “grossly overrated.” “The daily trading volume of BTC = the REAL supply of BTC,” Brandt stressed. “The daily reduction of mined bitcoins (NEW supply) equals approx 2/100th of 1% of REAL supply.”

Bitcoin halving & bull market are approaching as the fundamentals are very much in place

Bitcoin is a ticking time-bomb 💣

— Crypto Capital Venture ⚡ (@cryptorecruitr) March 24, 2020

When people told crypto pundit and trader Tone Vays that economic conditions would probably bolster BTC, Vays seemed to think the opposite. “Actually the halving being so close is a bad thing, if this Zombie Apocalypse continues into the summer,” Vays replied. “BTC might still be crashing as the halving just crushes the miners.” The popular crypto trader Donalt’s view of the situation seemed grim as well. “So miners get half the amount of Bitcoin and can only sell it for half the price in a few week’s time,” the trader tweeted. “Halving sounds like a sh** deal for them, not gonna lie.”

I gotta say, not many better ways to make the point as #Bitcoin going through its halving right as the world’s fiat currencies go through a doubling.

— Nathaniel Whittemore (@nlw) March 19, 2020

The first two halvings were followed by increased BTC values and security increased a great deal as well. Since the 2016 halving, BTC miners’ combined hashrate processed at the time was just above one exahash per second (EH/s). In the four years since, miners have captured an all-time hashrate high of around 136 EH/s on February 20, 2020, although since the price slid during the last two weeks, the overall hashrate has lost 26%, dropping to 100 EH/s.

While many BTC supporters believe that the chain is secure, a few skeptics think security will drop after May 13. The CEO of AVA Labs and Cornell Professor Emin Gün Sirer thinks that the next few reward reductions will diminish BTC’s overall security. “As the amount of awards given to the miners dwindles down, the security of the network will drop,” Gün Sirer said. “If the security drops sufficiently, we may even see massive double-spend attacks targeting exchanges. This would, in turn, trigger exchanges to extend their confirmation times.” The professor added:

At some point, the attackers might have access to so much hashpower that no reasonable number of confirmations may be sufficient to guarantee security.

Miners Must Rise Above the Tide to Remain Profitable

No one quite knows what will happen during the next BTC halving but we do know there’s a lot of different factors in 2020 such as the price after the halving, the global economy, hashrate and difficulty, and the number of transactions and fees as well. James Todaro, head of research at Tradeblock, has tweeted that miner costs need to surge from $7K per BTC to between $12,000 and $15,000 following the halving event. “Following the Bitcoin halving, miners’ estimated breakeven costs will rise from ~$7,000 today to ~$12,000–15,000 per BTC after. I would not be surprised if we see Bitcoin prices rise above these levels so that miners remain profitable,” Todaro wrote.

What do you think about BTC’s upcoming block reward reduction? Let us know in the comments section.

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Mobile Gifting Platform Swych Announces Cryptocurrency Support

17/02/2019 by Idelto Editor

On Feb. 15, the Dallas-based mobile gifting company Swych announced it will be accepting cryptocurrencies for payments. Starting next week, instead of using traditional payment processors, Swych users will be able to pay using decentralized digital assets such as BCH, LTC, ETH, BTC, and ETC.

Also Read: Bitcoin’s Social Contract Must Be Resilient to the Whims of Future Generations

Swych Mobile Gifting App to Add Support for 5 Cryptocurrencies

The popular mobile application Swych allows people to give virtual gift cards from over 600 well known retailers and if the person receiving the gift doesn’t like the store they can easily swap the virtual funds for another retailer. Swych was founded in 2015 by Deepak Jain and is backed by capital investment from UAE Exchange Group, a global money transfer exchange, and payment solutions provider. The gift cards available stem from retailers such as Toysrus, Old Navy, Macy’s, Nike, Target, Best Buy, Gap, Banana Republic, Sephora, Nordstrom, Amazon, and more. Essentially Swych allows users to purchase and send gift cards similarly to platforms like Egifter and Gyft. However, the mobile application allows people to effortlessly switch gift cards if they don’t appreciate the particular brand originally gifted.

Swych uses payment providers like Apple Pay, Paypal, Amazon Pay, and Google Pay. But according to an announcement on Friday, the company will be accepting five cryptocurrencies next week. Swych users will be able to pay with bitcoin cash (BCH), litecoin (LTC), ethereum (ETH), bitcoin core (BTC), and ethereum classic ETC. Deepak Jain, CEO of Swych, explained during the announcement that gift cards are a de facto choice among consumers and some of the same consumers also want to spend digital currencies.

“We feel we are ahead of the game considering most retailers have not yet chosen to accept crypto payments,” Jain stated. “In keeping with Swych’s mission of providing our consumers with choice and flexibility, we’d like to provide new options based on our customers’ needs — crypto integration is one of the many requests we’ve received.

‘Cryptocurrencies: The Go-to Choice for Consumers’

Jain says Swych is the only application that allows consumers to send gift cards by simply using a mobile phone number. Swych also got into blockchain technology last year and has rolled out a cross border gifting platform that’s built on top of the Stellar network. Jain believes blockchain technology and cryptocurrency solutions will make the digital gifting platforms’ operations become far more efficient. “While digital gifting is undoubtedly an amazing use case for blockchain, so is payments and I think cryptocurrencies are gradually going to become the go-to choice for consumers to make purchases on the internet,” Jain emphasized.

“For crypto holders, this means they can essentially use their crypto holdings for gift cards that are spendable at hundreds of different retail outlets,” Jain conceded. “There’s no doubt that this will be attractive to a large portion of the community, irrespective of whether the market is up or down.”

What do you think about the digital gifting platform Swych accepting cryptocurrencies? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Image credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, and Swych.

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