I take part of my income in Bitcoin and spend it, both on-chain and Lightning Network, pretty frequently. I visit a number of local places that accept Bitcoin and use it for online purchases too. There are several Bitcoin ATMs in my city but they mostly have KYC with low limits and/or high fees.
For purchases like cars or real estate it seems like you'd have to be pretty lucky to find a seller unless you're not particular about what you're buying.
I've also started keeping more physical cash on-hand lately.
I'm tired of hearing the "works on my machine" line about banks.
Here's a few issues I've run into in the last few years:
- I dissolved a corporation in Korea and it took nearly 1.5 years and $8k USD in lawyer fees to get ~$80k USD out of the country. My other option would've been to go back to Korea and buy Rolexes.
- I moved to an Eastern European country and spent several weeks providing KYC/AML docs after attempting to send $30k from the US to a local bank account while my funds were in limbo. Ended up having to use ATMs to pay rent and other expenses.
- Bought a house in said Eastern European country and almost lost the deal because of several bank delays. Seller was pissed and had to involve lawyers to calm him down. Technically I should've had to pay extra because of the delays, because of the way real estate deals are structured in that country.
- I moved to Latin America and went to probably 6 car dealers who all told me that purchasing a car would take up to 2 months because of the KYC/AML process involved in wiring money from the US. I ended up going various ATMs 40 times over the course of several weeks, withdrawing $500 at a time, so I could buy a used car off Facebook marketplace. Had to take over $20k in cash in a backpack to a lawyer's office to complete the deal. Spent way more time & money on my rental car than I wanted to.
- Earlier this year while visiting the US I went into a bank branch to withdraw $20k to purchase a used car for my dad and not only could the teller not help me, but it triggered a flag on my account that caused all of my funds to be frozen for several days until I was able to get it resolved. Ended up borrowing money from a friend so I could buy the car before I left the US.
- Sending even $500 to my bank account here in Latin America takes over a week with various questions from bank staff. Every time I worry if the funds will even arrive because it has to go through multiple intermediaries with various memos/notes to the intermediary receivers. From my US bank account to another bank in NY, credited to some European account holder to send to Europe with further instructions on how to get the money to me in Latin America. I bank with an institution that's run by the national government; I figured they'd have better international finance connections than any of the commercial banks, but apparently not.
- A couple weeks ago I decided I'd send $50k to my account here because I don't want to go through this processes every time I want to pay bills. 2 weeks later and my $50k is still stuck. The bank keeps coming back with more questions and requesting more documents every few days. Nobody at the bank can tell me how long it will take to release the funds.
I've got more stories like this, and I know many expats with similar stories. I'm fortunate that I even have US financial access, and that I'm not living in a country like Lebanon, Turkey, Argentina, Venezuela, or even worse Russia, Iran, Cuba, etc. Things are even more difficult in many other countries.
By the way, Western Union works great here and is super fast, but they take huge commissions. Funny how that works.
The traditional financial system works great if you live in a first-world financial bubble and all of your friends, family, business partners, etc. also live in first-world financial bubbles. Meanwhile some of us are still on the financial equivalent of dial-up while the typical HN poster is on gigabit fiber talking about how great all of the bloated 20MB web apps are for them. I'm sweating bullets every time I deal with a bank, while people on HN say "this shit is great!"
I'll be beyond happy if the Bitcoiners are right and the whole world eventually switches to a global permissionless currency.
For purchases like cars or real estate it seems like you'd have to be pretty lucky to find a seller unless you're not particular about what you're buying.
I've also started keeping more physical cash on-hand lately.