There is a good chance that you’ve heard of bitcoins, but presumed it was some type of payment service provider like PayPal or Xoom. It does work a bit like that because you can use it to pay for goods and services, but it is not a payment service. It is actually a type of currency. Digital currency, no less.
Here are a few facts about Bitcoins you need to know, including how to send money through Bitcoins…
Bitcoin Explained
Bitcoins, as mentioned earlier, is a kind of international currency. It is just like US dollars or Philippine pesos in that it is a form of legal (although that is still up in the air) tender, or cash money. The difference between Bitcoins and other types of currency is that it is not issued by any country, does not go through a clearinghouse, and it is not controlled by any one entity. It is a decentralized, peer-to-peer, financial network. Because it is a virtual currency, it has no physical component, much like Farmville money.
The origin of Bitcoin is quite remarkable. An individual that goes by the name Satoshi Nakamoto published the concept of a specific formula for cryptocurrency (crypto because it uses codes instead of paper to control creation and transactions) in 2009 and called it Bitcoin. It is not the first time this type of concept was proposed, but it was the first that got off the ground. Nakamoto collaborated with a community of supporters to do this, and in the first two years created the first millions of Bitcoins for circulation. Nakamoto faded from the scene in 2011, and no one knows who he or she really is to this day.
How Bitcoins Work
The use of bitcoins is quite new to most Filipinos, but it can be a good alternative to send money to Philippines through bitcoins. As a type of widely accepted currency in the digital world, Bitcoins have real purchasing power. As long as you have a Bitcoin wallet, your employer can pay you in Bitcoins, and you can cash it in for any currency at the current exchange rate.
If you want to send money to the Philippines, you can buy Bitcoins from an exchange website in your country and send it from your wallet app to your recipient, who can then sell the bitcoins for local currency. As with most currency exchanges, the buying rate for bitcoins is higher than the selling rate.
However, in the Philippines at least, the buying and selling rate is very close. For example, at the time of this writing, the buying rate for one bitcoin on Coins.ph is PhP 18,814 and the selling rate is PhP 18,314.
Buyers Beware!
Bitcoins are a bit of a gamble, however. Essentially, bitcoins have about as much value as Farmville money. It only works as a currency because people accept it as such. It has purchasing power because a large group of people assigns a value to it and trade goods and services for it. Without this agreement, Bitcoins will have no value.
If for some reason, many people decide not to use bitcoins, its purchasing power will drop. For example, if you buy bitcoins at PhP 18,814 today, and the value drops to PhP 16,250.00 tomorrow, you lose more than PhP 2,000 in purchasing power. On the other hand, if it suddenly shoots up to PhP 25,000, you gain more than PhP 6,000.
Most people would think that it would never work in the real world, but it does. The value of one bitcoin began at US$0.30 in 2009, and at its highest rose to US$1216.73. If you have the stomach for it, you can make money simply by buying bitcoins, and then waiting for the price to rise before selling it.
Currently, one bitcoin is worth US$395.99. If you use bitcoins to send US dollars to the Philippines, the exchange comes to about PhP 46.25. That is not bad at all as a way to send money to the Philippines and avoid unfair exchange rates and transaction fees. The only thing you have to worry about is if the bitcoin exchange drops in value before you can cash it in!
Bitcoin Companies in the Philippines
As previously mentioned, Coins.ph is a bitcoin exchange company in the Philippines, and it has one of the widest remittance options in the market as of this date. Note that there are transaction fees to buy bitcoins, and some remittance methods e.g. GCash have fees as well. There are a few more, though, because the Philippines is the third largest remittance market in the world.
However, only BuyBitcoinph (buying PhP19,654.02; selling PhP18,405.75) appears to be working as of this writing. You can also check out LocalBitcoins, which has a listing of various local traders. Overall, however, Coins.ph seems to give the best deal and service in the Philippines.
Speak Your Mind