Currently chilling at a cafe at midnight in some Red Sea coastal town five hours south of Cairo. A doctor from Syria recognizes me and comes to talk. He is briefly here in Egypt but works in Syria treating people. He and his colleagues use the informal Hawala system to move money for legitimate purposes, because Syria is sanctioned by the US. The Hawala system is ancient, stretching back to the medieval Silk Road and prior, but is still used today in many regions. He’s a fan of Bitcoin obviously. So many people in the developed world take money for granted. But people in developing regions or conflict regions often have a better appreciation of permissionless money, undebaseable money, etc.

Replies (22)

One Day the appreciation for permissionless money will increase dramatically in the US ect. Unfortunately some people need something very dramatic to happen as a wake up call before realizing things.
frphank's avatar
frphank 1 year ago
Hawala is great. It's the opposite of Bitcoin as it's built on trust, and lots of it. It's an inspiration for lots of peer-to-peer networks, financial and otherwise. IIRC it was the inspiration for Ripple before Ripple became a blockchain.
frphank's avatar
frphank 1 year ago
For Hawala the permission of literally every transmitter in the forwarding chain is required.
Faroaldo's avatar
Faroaldo 1 year ago
Your book is top of the list of my summer readings. Just don’t know in front of which sea I will read it 😎
Hawala is neccesary in a gold based system, where transferring physical gold is a huge risk. Portability and verification are the downfall of gold. Hawala gave birth to the goldsmiths and that gave birth to fractional reserve banking. And we've been debt slaves ever since.
PloyScout's avatar
PloyScout 1 year ago
You would think that a system as trust-demanding and archaic as the Hawala would have perished entirely by now. Perhaps the fact that it still exists to any extent today suggests how difficult it is to fully comprehend how bad the modern fiat system actually is.
frphank's avatar
frphank 1 year ago
It suggests how well a trust based system works.
MiddleWay's avatar
MiddleWay 1 year ago
My wife is a yacht broker in Europe. Every large payment from a buyer in EU to a seller in US is a nightmare recently. Correspondent banks just freeze the amounts ($0.5m or more) "to check for AML/sanctions evasion". I believe they just patch their balance sheets and earn interest, not even responding back to the sender until investigated. It takes weeks to get the necessary information to them via the sender's bank, because the whole system is crazily inefficient. They hire the dumbest employees in payments departments. I hope the rich guys will get fed up with this bullshit soon and start using Bitcoin.
the more pointless bureaucracy you make the more pointless jobs you make for people too stupid to realize their job is pointless and the more taxes you need to take in to hire these people because the private sector won't suffer stupid in the workplace. oops I said it out loud
An interesting note with some gems in the comment section. #siamstr #nostr #bitcoin
Lyn Alden's avatar Lyn Alden
Currently chilling at a cafe at midnight in some Red Sea coastal town five hours south of Cairo. A doctor from Syria recognizes me and comes to talk. He is briefly here in Egypt but works in Syria treating people. He and his colleagues use the informal Hawala system to move money for legitimate purposes, because Syria is sanctioned by the US. The Hawala system is ancient, stretching back to the medieval Silk Road and prior, but is still used today in many regions. He’s a fan of Bitcoin obviously. So many people in the developed world take money for granted. But people in developing regions or conflict regions often have a better appreciation of permissionless money, undebaseable money, etc.
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We bought our boat/home six months ago using Bitcoin. Sold our old boat in 2019 using Bitcoin. Its got the best the easiest way to transfer value the worlds ever seen yet most still think it’s a scam!
It's mostly not employees or better. They are not stupid. They are scared. Scared by bank and bank is scared by regulators who issues huge fines for any "wrong doing" which by very wide definition of EU regulations can be basically anything. I had a chance to see a EU bank training for AML. Let's say I'm surprised there is any business going on... EU the leader in regulations 😍
MiddleWay's avatar
MiddleWay 1 year ago
Those are US/Canadian correspondent banks that freeze the payments, and charge ridiculous fees for their service to press a button. I was a head of international payments and documentary business at a global bank some 15 years ago. I know this kitchen very well...