There may be some situations where this makes a lot of sense, particularly involving currency manipulation. For example, in Argentina, the official exchange rate was much less favorable than the actual (black market) exchange rate. Monero could enable someone to sell at the more favorable exchange rate locally, rather than relying the transfer provider in the source country to do it.

However, it’s important to consider potential market effects if this is done at scale. For some people, it could work, but probably not yet on such a large scale.

There’s at least a decent chance that Monero may actually be a better store of value than the destination currency would be and the receiver might just choose to keep it in Monero instead of converting it to their local currency.

That could make sense if Monero was a widely accepted currency for goods and services in the destination country. However, as far as I know, it usually needs to be converted to fiat currency for this.

So you would purchase Monero peer-to-peer in your country send it to them and if they need to exchange it when they get it they can choose when to do so and how much to convert.

Sure, P2P is the ideal without KYC, but if used at scale, this is going to eventually lead to an increase in value of Monero in source countries and a decrease in destination countries, especially since P2P exchanges are usually local in nature and less liquid than centralized exchanges. There would be heavy sell-side pressure in these P2P exchanges, whereas likely not nearly as many people would be buying Monero there. The spread between the buy price in developed countries and the sell price in developing economies could exceed 6%.

This could work if there are reliable exchanges already available in local currency on both sides, and if both sides have bank accounts and the technical know-how to use exchanges. However, if Monero were to become a large scale method of remittance transfers, then Monero could be overvalued in exchanges in source countries and undervalued in exchanges in destination countries, especially in situations where the currencies are not freely convertible. With P2P exchanges this situation may become even more exaggerated.

Eventually HFT traders may catch on and level the market, but this would essentially mean a transfer of wealth from the masses sending remittances to a few HFT traders.

My point is, though sure it works fine in limited situations in strong economies (where there are liquid, freely exchangable fiat currencies and fair exchanges with low fees), it is a lot more complicated than it seems to use it at such a scale or in countries with underdeveloped economies.

https://social.overheid.nl/about is the official Dutch government mastodon server

Brexit means that there will have to be a border checkpoint installed in Kent. This isn’t practical unless there is a lot of demand

Airlines are well known to price flights awkwardly in response to the market. They often price connecting flights lower than direct flights, even if that direct flight is part of the connecting itinerary. It is alleged that they use client data (generic such as time of day or specific such as device/location) to reprice their flights, but I think the limitations of the GDS¹ prevent this from happening.

What companies want to do is sell their product at the maximum price each client is willing to pay. This is already done in some ways by intentionally segmenting the market, such as by having multiple cabins on trains and planes, despite them all providing fundamentally the same service (transportation from point A to point B). More data from each client helps them target the cost of their product to each client and maximize their revenue.

I wouldn’t be surprised if user data is used more in the future to price products, especially as AI is getting more and more capable.

[1] https://hostagencyreviews.com/blog/what-is-gds

I would like to see a connection to PeerTube. I’m not exactly sure how it works but it might work here

I like the increase in competition, but my concern is for the 90+% of users who really don’t know what they’re doing. Can we be sure that all these alternative app stores will properly enforce security through their apps? At least the iOS app store and Google Play have some standards regarding apps that are actual malware, but could we trust every company to do this?

The “anti-consumer” approach of restricting apps that violate standards may very well be the best one for most people. I support the DMA and the right to sideload but I’m concerned about the impact it will have. Maybe we’ll go back to the early 2000s days of PC malware.

I’m glad to have moved from a country where taxes and (high) expected tips are on top of the price, to a country where tax is included in the price and tips are usually not expected. It makes a surprising difference in affordability when you can actually buy a €5 item with €5.

As soon as companies started asking for tips at self check-out, it became obvious that it’s just a way of trying to underpay their staff and shift that responsibility on the customer.