It seems a little bit silly...

Banks. Bitcoin. The two words in close proximity tend to get everyone excited.

When first perusing the news about a bank in Argentina using Bitcoin to enable cross-border payments, I was intrigued. Upon further examination, it's a little bit odd. Maybe I don't get it.

Here's what's happening in a nutshell. This bank in Argentina - Banco Masventas - is enabling cross-border payments for its customers. The customers don't actually touch any Bitcoin - just the bank uses it through Bitex and charges a fee for doing its customers the favour of taking care of the transaction. The bank is boasting that they can do cross-border payments to as many as 50 countries, settled in 24 hours or less.

OK.

So... why not just... use Bitcoin?

What does the bank have to do with this?

The problem here is most customers do not know that they themselves could just buy Bitcoin and send it cross-border, anywhere in the world, in about ten minutes. Either that, or they're too intimidated by the technical hurdles of buying, sending, and receiving Bitcoin. So, the bank and the service provider Bitex get a piece of the pie as intermediaries, while convincing customers that this is the better way to go because there are no intermediaries.

Does anyone else see how messed up this is?

Oh well. In the end, it could help build adoption of Bitcoin as customers might begin to see Bitcoin as more trustworthy. It is cheaper than the more archaic method of moving money around the world, so that's a good thing. I guess it's also a good thing that this bank sees it as something it can trust. It's just too bad that most people might go on for years paying the bank to send their Bitcoin for them when they could just do it themselves at a much lower cost.

It's time to get out there and teach people more about this stuff, before the banks convince everyone they can't take care of themselves.

*This is not professional trading advice - it's just my opinion!

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source:

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/argentinian-bank-allows-cross-border-payments-bitcoin/

image source:

https://pixabay.com/en/argentina-flags-argentina-flag-3001464/