Remittances
Let's say you are a high-net-worth individual (HNWI) that wants to send millions or billions of dollars. Want to send $5 million from the US to your business counterpart in Japan? On a weekend? At night? On a bank holiday? Well now you can do this for a few dollars at most. The fee would depend on network traffic and the number of UTXOs.
In the transaction below the sender sent roughly $1 billion for the price of a coffee.
112,027 BTC ($933,000,000 USD) transferred in a single transaction for the price of a cup of coffee (Tx fee = $3.89). #bitcoinhttps://t.co/7zFzSRItFf
— Nejc Kodrič (@nejc_kodric) October 14, 2019
Bitcoin is replacing an antiquated system. One where it requires bank tellers, forms, permission, working days, and wire fees to send money. Now you just need a cellphone with your bitcoin on it and a receiving address. Sending remittances (sending money from one place to another) is a huge industry today. It's projected to reach almost a trillion dollars globally by 2026. globalnewswire.com
Yet in 2011, only two years after Bitcoin was born, someone sent 500,000 bitcoins over the Bitcoin network. At the time, this represented $1 million dollars worth of value. But today that would be worth a cool $14 billion.
Bitcoin is especially king if you are sending money home to family. Remittances are a primary source of income for many countries. In Tonga, money received from family accounts for over 40% of their GDP. In El Salvador it's in the low 20s. data.worldbank.org
And funnily enough, these are the types of countries--Tonga & El Salvador--that push for Bitcoin adoption. Why do you think that is?
El Salvador’s new bitcoin plan could cost money providers like Western Union and others $400 million a year, says President Bukele. CNBC
You can stop paying 1-25% on remittances (depending on country and method of payment) and pay a small fee to miners. Or use Jack Mallers' Strike app. With it you can send small amounts of money with very little fees to places like Vietnam, the Philippines, Nigeria, and Ghana. Family members can receive their local currency directly to their flip phones. And it's powered by Bitcoin's Lightning Network (A second layer solution created to help Bitcoin scale).