![](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net\/max\/700\/1%2Ax7Jog4Hf91fe5BQB4MBuBw.png?w=640&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
So I\u2019m in desperate need to send money to my family in Venezuela this week, and sadly they\u2019ve still not adopted (or even heard off, much less understood bitcoin yet) and I\u2019ve been forced to wire some money to an account in Per\u00fa to a friend of the family. I cannot send the money directly to Venezuela since my country is now ruled by a communist dictator which has a strong control over currency exchange, pretty much making Venezuela\u2019s Bolivar useless.<\/p>\n
So I start my Wire transfer on my bank\u2019s website, and I\u2019m asked to do the following things:<\/p>\n
You need to create a \u201cwire recipient\u201d if this is the first time sending money to that person\/institution. This means, re-validating who I am via SMS Code, then entering the recipient\u2019s bank address in Per\u00fa (something I had to google), the recipient\u2019s address (something I had to massage to fit the bank\u2019s form), a bank routing number (SWIFT or ABA), a description of the recipient, a nickname for the recipient, and ultimately the freaking bank account number.<\/p>\n
About 10 minutes later I finally start the Wire Scheduling process, after I\u2019m done with yet another long form and several verification steps, the bank tells me that I\u2019ll have to pay an additional $40 fee\u2026<\/p>\n
This number seems to come out right out of Gandalf\u2019s anus, some banks charge $12, some charge $19, but you know bank\u2019s are there to steal from us all.<\/p>\n
The next day I get a phone call from someone who claims to be from the bank, I ignore these calls just in case it\u2019s a scammer trying to get my bank account information. Then at night I try to log in to the bank\u2019s website, sometime around 11pm, only to find out that I need to call the bank\u2019s 800 number because my account has been locked due to irregular activity, F my life, here we go! (and I\u2019m paying $40 for this?)<\/p>\n
I call the bank, a process I dread as I hate phone calls, people and even much more the call center world with its cheesy waiting music and advertising. I luckily wait just about a minute with some cheesy music in the background as expected (spending the minutes from my wireless phone plan) and then a guy has to ask me about 5 different questions to verify that I\u2019m not a scammer, turns out they even know what cars I\u2019ve bought in the past, information they shouldn\u2019t know in the first place since I\u2019ve never given it to them\u2026 (can I sue them for privacy breach?), and then he proceeds to ask me the relationship between me and the person I tried to send the money to\u2026<\/p>\n
What the *bleep* do you need to know ?! and If I were doing some nasty things like weapons dealings or some kind of money laundering for drug dealing, or sending money to my mistress, do you think I\u2019d tell really you? Stupid corporate rules and regulations are a self inflicted falacy.<\/p>\n
After being analy probed as If I were some kind of criminal by my banking institution, the one charging me USD $40 to do its job through a process that should be immediat, the guy tells me that \u201cthe wire transfer HAD BEEN CANCELLED\u201d but he\u2019s going to reprocess it for me, and that it should take TWO DAYS to get there \u201cbecause it\u2019s an international transfer\u201d<\/p>\n
At this point I want to raise hell and have the transfer fee refunded, for forty bucks the money should\u2019ve travelled back in time and gotten there the day before!<\/p>\n
Just so you know, all this stupidity for a mere $2,000, lord knows what would\u2019ve happened I had tried to send over $500k over there, maybe the FBI would\u2019ve raided my house or something.<\/p>\n
now\u2026 \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
How would this process be with BitCoin?<\/p>\n
I\u2019d open my BitCoin wallet.
\nI\u2019d paste the wallet address of my friend, it would look something like this: \u201c1FXiLXuq7Pr5FgHbwcciyvw7VJ4b3nGZPA\u201d
\nI\u2019d enter the corresponding amount in Bitcoins
\nI\u2019d optionally enter a comission fee for the miners (miners are other people who run computers to find bitcoins and process transfers and collect the optional fees) to speed up the transfer, something like BTC 0.0002 (the equivalent of about $0.25) would suffice to make the transfer be processed faster by the peer to peer network, the money transfer would be confirmed in about 20 minutes. (If I didn\u2019t pay a fee, maybe it\u2019d take a couple of days people say, I\u2019ve yet to try fee less transfers)
\nSend.
\nSimply put, Fuck Banks.<\/p>\n
If you have a bit of vision, and if you remember how the internet has disrupted industry after industry it\u2019s a no brainer to see that the banking industry will be firing a hell of a lot of unneeded people in the future. I\u2019m not saying banks will die, but a lot of people won\u2019t be necessary, a trend seen everywhere technological disruption comes to solve problems, and boy does banking have a lot of inconveniences.<\/p>\n
As Bitcoin becomes more adopted, it will make absolutely no sense to have most of your money in the bank, you will be able to trade with people worldwide without dealing with exchange rates, or explaining yourself to nosy instituions, your money will be safe without safes (to those in the bank security industry, you better start thinking how to make BitCoin safer for retail and eCommerce), it will be accesible 24\/7, you\u2019re able to use it from a computer, smartphone. That\u2019s a lot of people that don\u2019t need to be part of the equation of money storage and money transfer.
\nand so you know, here\u2019s some people transfering really big and small amounts of money via BitTorrent, no questions asked, fees optional.<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net\/max\/918\/1%2AJKI3iUTyGAIZIG4hRE6AFg.png?w=640&ssl=1\"\/)
<\/p>\n
it\u2019s not weird to see million dollar transactions every day, in fact, just yesterday the equivalent of about $246.6 million dollars were transacted on the BitCoin network, and about $30 million dollars were traded on the BitCoin markets, and we\u2019re talking here about the early adopter crowd alone.<\/p>\n
We geeks tend to live the future about 2 to 5 years in advance, you might want to pay a little more attention to what we\u2019re doing with money.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So I\u2019m in desperate need to send money to my family in Venezuela this week, and sadly they\u2019ve still not adopted (or even heard off, much less understood bitcoin yet) and I\u2019ve been forced to wire some money to an account in Per\u00fa to a friend of the family. I cannot send the money directly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1361],"tags":[1364,1258,1363],"class_list":["post-3202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bitcoin-2","tag-banks","tag-bitcoin","tag-money"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5Unzf-PE","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3183,"url":"https:\/\/www.gubatron.com\/blog\/bitcoin-essentials-and-must-have-bookmarks\/","url_meta":{"origin":3202,"position":0},"title":"BitCoin essentials and must have bookmarks","author":"gubatron","date":"November 19, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"BitCoin is probably the most exciting thing to happen to money since the history of... money, as off the shelf computer harware, software, cryptographic tools, and p2p internet technology have come together to create a currency that: - Doesn\u2019t need a bank to be secure or to validate transactions, it\u2019s\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "BitCoin"","block_context":{"text":"BitCoin","link":"https:\/\/www.gubatron.com\/blog\/category\/bitcoin-2\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3276,"url":"https:\/\/www.gubatron.com\/blog\/why-it-only-took-me-less-than-2-minutes-to-believe-in-bitcoin\/","url_meta":{"origin":3202,"position":1},"title":"Why it only took me less than 2 minutes to believe in Bitcoin","author":"gubatron","date":"April 30, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Seeing is believing. I don't care what Warren Buffet or all the Bitcoin nay sayers think, I care about how real, useful and freeing Bitcoin is today even in its infancy. Just stare at any random minute of Blockchain transactions in realtime and you will see that Bitcoin is not\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "BitCoin"","block_context":{"text":"BitCoin","link":"https:\/\/www.gubatron.com\/blog\/category\/bitcoin-2\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3195,"url":"https:\/\/www.gubatron.com\/blog\/how-to-import-a-backed-up-wallet-in-bitcoin-qt\/","url_meta":{"origin":3202,"position":2},"title":"How to import a backed up wallet in Bitcoin-Qt","author":"gubatron","date":"November 20, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"The Bitcoin-Qt client has an export feature, but not an import feature, importing a wallet is a bit of a manual process and it can be quite scary for the non-computer saavy since you need to do this kind of stuff because you got a new computer or your old\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "BitCoin"","block_context":{"text":"BitCoin","link":"https:\/\/www.gubatron.com\/blog\/category\/bitcoin-2\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3291,"url":"https:\/\/www.gubatron.com\/blog\/the-real-price-of-bitcoin-in-bolivares-fuertes-bitven-com\/","url_meta":{"origin":3202,"position":3},"title":"The real price of Bitcoin in Bolivares Fuertes: BitVen.com","author":"gubatron","date":"May 23, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"I've just released a tool for Venezuelans looking to know what the ACTUAL price of Bitcoin is in Bolivares Fuertes, it's called BitVen.com Most price tickers out there don't know about Venezuela's currency control reality and they post the Bitcoin price using the Government's official dollar exchange rate, the problem\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "BitCoin"","block_context":{"text":"BitCoin","link":"https:\/\/www.gubatron.com\/blog\/category\/bitcoin-2\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.gubatron.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/Screen-Shot-2014-05-22-at-9.39.28-PM.png?fit=547%2C482&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.gubatron.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/Screen-Shot-2014-05-22-at-9.39.28-PM.png?fit=547%2C482&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.gubatron.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/Screen-Shot-2014-05-22-at-9.39.28-PM.png?fit=547%2C482&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":758,"url":"https:\/\/www.gubatron.com\/blog\/cows-also-share\/","url_meta":{"origin":3202,"position":4},"title":"Cows also share","author":"gubatron","date":"March 25, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"User luisdrk from Caracas,Venezuela has posted this picture on flickr. Pretty cool stuff. it's actually a parody of this picture by Jesus Molina. It's really funny because we had our inspiration from a similar source, we looked for the words \"frost wire\" in flickr, and we saw frozen barbed wires,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "FrostWire"","block_context":{"text":"FrostWire","link":"https:\/\/www.gubatron.com\/blog\/category\/frostwire\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3204,"url":"https:\/\/www.gubatron.com\/blog\/why-buying-bitcoin-in-2013-is-a-no-brainer\/","url_meta":{"origin":3202,"position":5},"title":"Why buying Bitcoin in 2013 is a no brainer","author":"gubatron","date":"December 5, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"I think the BitCoin market cap will grow AT LEAST ten fold in 2014 as only a mere 10% of the internet\u2019s b2c trade exponentially shifts into Bitcoin as the internet\u2019s de-facto currency thanks to it\u2019s convenience and optional low transaction fees. \u201cGlobal business-to-consumer e-commerce sales will pass the 1\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "BitCoin"","block_context":{"text":"BitCoin","link":"https:\/\/www.gubatron.com\/blog\/category\/bitcoin-2\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gubatron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gubatron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gubatron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gubatron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gubatron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3202"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.gubatron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3205,"href":"https:\/\/www.gubatron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3202\/revisions\/3205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gubatron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gubatron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gubatron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}