Last week,
presidential candidate Donald Trump revealed his plan for funding the
wall that he wants to build on the border between Mexico and the
southern United States. How would he generate the billions of dollars to
construct it? He has a simple plan: block the flow of remittance funds
from United States to Mexico. Cutting off that resource would compel the
Mexican government into agreeing to pay for the the wall, which has a
reported cost of $10 – 12 billion dollars.
Trump's plan is woefully ignorant of what remittance is, how
it works, and why it is so important. Millions of Mexicans living in
the United States work and save their money so they can send it to their
families who still live in Mexico. This is called remittance and it is
estimated that over $24 billion dollars per year flows from the US to
Mexico.
In a spirited blog
post to accompany its latest poster campaign, eco-friendly Bitcoin
mining company Genesis Mining imagined what would happen if Trump
succeeds in getting his plan approved and Mexicans in the US could no
longer send money home to support their families. Companies like Western
Union, MoneyGram, and Xoom are all forced to comply with these laws
since they are strictly regulated. What would the average worker do to
make sure they can still support their family?
"The solution would be Bitcoin because Bitcoin can't be
stopped. Not by Trump. Not by Putin. Not by anyone. Sure, you can pass
regulations to make it more difficult to use but at the end of the day,
if people need it, they will always find a way," said Marco Streng, CEO,
Genesis Mining.
So how could Bitcoin be used?
Let's say a Mexican in the US works in construction and
receives his weekly wage in cash, which is very common. After the
workers receive their payment in cash, they could go to a website like LocalBitcoins.com, place an order in person, and once they've received their Bitcoins, simply send them to their family back home in Mexico.
Or, they could take that cash, go to one of the many Bitcoin ATM's in the U.S. and purchase their Bitcoins there.
The Challenge
The real challenge today would be receiving and converting
the funds on the Mexico end. It appears there are only three Bitcoin
ATM's in Mexico, but it's safe to assume that with $24 billion on the
line, some savvy entrepreneurs in Mexico would realize the potential and
install more ATMs. Once those ATMs are installed throughout the country
there would be little anyone could do to stop the flow of remittance
funds, noted Streng.
Genesis should be applauded for its Bitcoin awareness
raising poster campaigns (a previous campaign featured JP Morgan CEO
Jamie Dimon and stated the Bitcoin would eat his lunch). Other big
players in the Bitcoin ecosystem should perhaps follows this lead and
raise public awareness of Bitcoin.
Streng added in his post: "
Now
again, we aren't here to take sides. We just saw this as a great
opportunity to raise awareness for Bitcoin as a potential use case to a
major potential problem. So, across Southern and Northern California,
we've taken out billboards that will run for the upcoming weeks that aim
to raise awareness for Bitcoin as part
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