121 sats \ 5 replies \ @KenyaCoin 11 Aug 2022 \ on: I am Abubakar, AMA! bitcoin
P2P trading is very actively used in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa, due to bank restrictions by the central banks.
But there's still very little in-person F2F (face-to-face) P2P trading.
What would help make it so this becomes a more common occurrence, or are there reasons it should not (or will not) become a more common practice?
... necessary to maintain a resilient on-and-off ramp infrastructure for Bitcoin to continue succeeding in increasingly difficult jurisdictions.
Everything being built is useless if Bitcoin cannot operate in hostile working conditions, whether its network or regulation related.
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Lol, I hit ctrl-enter or something after just the first three words, as I was still typing the question. But it worked -- great reply!! I've edited my question.
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No worries, I was excited to answer, lol.
F2F will only flourish in areas of high levels of distrust and tight networks of trust. The main thing is, that the whole point of BTC is to eliminate the requirement of trust to exchange value. However, certain transactions, specifically those outside the Bitcoin network like on-and-of ramping, sometimes require a degree of trust between the parties that necessitate physical mutual transfer attestation.
We'll likely see more and more folks moving to products and services that are smooth UX-wise and eliminate or reduce that counterparty risk. However, in places where F2F is traditionally ubiquitous, they may have high levels of that.
In general, you don't want adoption to be conditional on requiring F2F on either end of transacting as that won't scale beyond micro-communities within geographical boundaries, i.e. villages, small cities, towns, etc.
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But isn't every mobile money agent providing a similar service (i.e., cash-in / cash-out, F2F)? Wouldn't bitcoin be eventually be able to be considered as being just an alternative to telecom-based mobile money, with a similar ability to easily convert to and from cash?
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Yes, as I said, where F2F already works great Bitcoin would be plugged in to replace whatever medium was previously used to exchange value. I think Bitcoin would certainly be an alternative but would still be used over mobile-money infrastructure, specifically via USSD codes in places where this makes up the core infrastructure for transacting.
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