REINVENTING

REMITTANCES
WITH BITCOIN

First Edition
v0.1.201702
Preface
This book is for Bitcoin enthusiasts, entrepreneurs,
and industry veterans who wish to fully understand the
Bitcoin-powered remittance process that startups around
the world have been working on since 2013. It’s our hope
that sharing these stories and data in a structured and
well-packaged format will contribute to the rapid growth
of the global crypto-money transfer network.

BloomSolutions, Inc. (https://www.bloom.solutions) is a

Bitcoin remittance software company incorporated in the
Philippines, Singapore, and Australia. It was founded by
Israel Keys and Luis Buenaventura, and has offices in
Makati City, Philippines.

Unless otherwise stated, all text, images, and book and

cover designs are properties of the author.

Photo courtesy of Alosh Bennett

Licensed via Creative Commons
 Contents
Preface 1 The Settlement Process 15

The Bootstrapper’s Guide to Bitcoin The Destination Exchange  15

Remittances 4
The Arbitrage Web 16
The Numbers 5
Does the Bitcoin Price Matter? 17
The Context 5
Bitcoin Regulation Around the World 21
The Recipe 6
De-risking MSBs 22
The Mechanics 7
Bitcoin Regulation 22
The Law 8
The Central Bank Perspective 25
The Dream 9
AML and KYC 25
The Invisible Bitcoin Solution 10
Bitpesa and the African Bitcoin Mirage 27
The First Mile 11
Bitspark vs. Hong Kong 30
The Last Mile 13
The South Korean Gold Rush 33
The Origin Exchange 14
A Bridge of Bitcoins 34

2
 A Revelatory Success 35 Postscript 50
A Most Expensive Proposition 35 Online Resources 51
A Modicum of Trust 36 Joining the Bloom Network 52
Abra: The Uber of Remittances? 38 The Bloom Web Application 53

OKLink’s US$100M Guarantee 41 The Bloom API 53

Uphold, AirTM, and Latin America 43 API Entities 55

Upholding Value 44 Remittance Workflow 56

The LatAm Environment 45 Pre-funding Workflow 56

AirTM’s Cashier Network 45 Post-funding Workflow 57

Why Doesn’t Western Union Use Bitcoin? 47 API Support and Feedback 57

Immobile Money Transfer 48

Regulatory Uncertainty 49
CHAPTER ONE

The
Bootstrapper’s
Guide to Bitcoin
Remittances
There’s a lot of rhetoric about Bitcoin and its impact on
the US$430 billion international remittance industry. One
of the cryptocurrency’s most obvious uses is, after all,
sending money across the planet with roughly the same
effort as sending an email.

The potential effect on emerging markets — aggregate

savings that are larger than most countries’ education
budgets — cannot be overstated. But beyond all the
pontificating there is still the practical implementation
that has yet to be sorted out.
 It’s accurate to say then that Mexico relies on a singular
The Numbers1 remittance corridor with the United States, while the Phil-
ippines is dependent upon multiple corridors with multiple
As is widely repeated in the money transfer industry, the
countries, a circumstance which more closely echoes the two
Philippines is the third-largest receiver of remittances in the
largest remittance countries, India and China (US$71 billion
world. The numbers are compelling: US$26 billion received
and US$64 billion, respectively).
in 2013, an estimated US$27.5 billion in 2014, and consistent
growth of about US$1 billion to US$2 billion annually. Mexico
is right behind with US$23 billion received in 2013, although it
has been declining in volume since the U.S. housing market The Context
crash several years ago.
Let’s preface the rest of this discussion with the statement
Both Mexico and the Philippines have the United States that it is simply not possible for a small bitcoin startup to
as their single-largest source of remittances - but to widely singlehandedly overthrow Western Union, MoneyGram or
varying degrees. The world’s largest economy accounts for even, Remitly, at this stage. It is however possible to provide
98 percent of Mexico’s remittance volume, whereas in the a very compelling alternative to a small subsection of their
Philippines, it accounts for a little over 30 percent. customers. “Narrow your focus to the smallest possible
problem you can solve,” as the oft-quoted startup saying
A closer inspection also seems to indicate that the nearly
goes.
US$10 billion in volume from the Philippines being attributed
to the U.S. isn’t coming from the U.S. at all. In reality, a Additionally, let’s accept the fact that bitcoin as a currency
significant (although still unknown) amount is simply funds is pretty terrible at the moment, and focus instead on what
being routed via nostro bank accounts from the Middle East, it’s good at: instant settlement. Also, let’s assume that your
which hosts over 2.5 million Filipinos. Additionally, there are average startup doesn’t have the resources to open overseas
40 other countries currently hosting at least 10,000 Filipinos offices in multiple countries or to obtain all the necessary
respectively, an international pageantry which also includes legal and regulatory requirements for operating in those
Canada, Malaysia, Australia, Japan, and the United Kingdom. countries.
1 This piece was originally published in Techcrunch in January 2015. It has
since been edited for clarity and updated with new information.

5
 Lastly, let’s also make the very reasonable assumption that their HKD into Bitcoin (BTC) before sending it to the last-mile
most migrant workers (i.e. the most consistent remitters) don’t service, and one could make a reasonably profitable business
care about cryptocurrency or the blockchain or the coming out of performing that service for them.
financial revolution, but will naturally go to a service if it saves
them money. Indeed, this is already happening organically. The “on-ramp”
company (Bitspark in Hong Kong and Align Commerce in the
Given those parameters, what kind of bitcoin remittance U.S. as early examples) accepts local fiat currency at the till,
business can we build? and converts that cash into bitcoin on the back-end before
transmitting the funds to the off-ramps in the Philippines,
Indonesia, or elsewhere.

The Recipe On the surface, it doesn’t seem like a very exciting premise
for a “financial revolution,” but let’s think about what’s actually
We like to refer to services like Bloom in the Philippines or happening here. Small businesses that have no formal part-
BitPesa in Kenya as “last mile” bitcoin remittance services. nerships, binding contracts, or even lines of credit between
These services accept bitcoin from overseas, convert it into them, are settling cross-border payments in real time on
pesos, dinars or shillings, then deliver those funds to the final behalf of their customers. This has never been possible
beneficiary via a variety of domestic transfer methods. The before without a centralized intermediary (traditionally:
beneficiary doesn’t need to know that those funds were ever SWIFT, or PayPal, sort of).
transmitted via bitcoin, they only know that the sender had to
spend a little less money while doing so. There’s no volatility When you describe it that way, the process seems straight-
risk as the recipient never touches bitcoin; all risk is managed forward. Most traditional bankers immediately understand
by the service. the concept of “HKD -> BTC -> PHP,” because currently the
standard workflow is “HKD -> USD -> PHP.” On paper, we’ve
By specializing on just the last mile, there’s an invitation really just replaced the dollar with its more nimble, modern
for other bitcoin entrepreneurs from other countries to form counterpart.
informal corridors. A customer in Hong Kong needs to convert
In practice, however, there’s a lot more to it than that.

6
 even. As the service volume grows however, automation in
The Mechanics the form of trading bots that interact with the international
exchanges will be necessary to keep ahead of volatility.
At their core, all bitcoin remittance startups are brokerages.
It’s a lot harder to be the off-ramp, in most cases. It’s basic
Operating as on-ramps, they must have access to large
migration theory all over again: on-ramps tend to exist in
amounts of bitcoin that they can purchase in real time. Buying
countries with better banking infrastructure and deeper
bitcoin on-demand is the only way to reduce volatility risk, as
bitcoin liquidity, while off-ramps tend to be in countries where
holding the cryptocurrency has not proven to be a financially
the bitcoin community is in its infancy. This isn’t a problem so
sound strategy over these past 12 months.
much as a massive opportunity, and if one has the stomach
Access to an exchange with locally available pay-in methods for it, operating as a last-mile remittance service is where
and low trading fees is key here. In the U.S., Coinbase and the largest growth spurts will be observed. It’s only natural.
Circle are at the top of the list. In Europe, Bitstamp and Between the two of them, the Philippines and Indonesia
Kraken. In Australia, Coinjar and Independent Reserve. In receive remittances from over 50 different jurisdictions. As
Singapore, Itbit. In the Middle East, BitOasis. The list goes each new inward corridor comes online, the incoming bitcoin
on. volume spikes.

Operating as off-ramps, the startups need to have enough Additionally, the off-ramps need to be connected to the
buyers for the bitcoin they receive to raise sufficient fiat to various domestic remittance methods in their respective
make payouts to their customers’ beneficiaries. If bitcoin’s countries. In the Philippines, there are more pawnshops
price were trending upwards, this would be a simple game of than banks, hence, pawnshops are more frequently used as
buying low and selling high, but the movement over the past cash-out methods than banks. In Indonesia, a combination of
year has been in the other direction. banks and the post office appear to be the preferred strategy.

With a remittance volume in the low hundred BTCs daily, a In India, the extremely popular (and completely informal)
single broker with good connections can often sell over-the- money transfer system of hawala implies that your cash
counter quickly enough to turn a small profit, or at least break

7
 pickup point could be anything from a jewelry store to a travel
agency. The Law
It’ll be interesting to observe whether fledgling bitcoin remit- In most countries, a business engaging in remittance
tance businesses in India choose to model their approach activities will be categorised as a “Money Transfer Operator”
after the hawala brokers or use the formal routes provided by and required to obtain a license as such. The costs of these
the banks and the post office. licenses tend to vary wildly from country to country. In the

The author gives a 20-minute presentation at Blockfin Asia 2016 in Vietnam on the growth of Bitcoin remittances around
the world. See the entire video here at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0f4VVoARik. (Video and image courtesy of
Blockfin Asia.)

8
 U.S., hardly any bitcoin companies have ever managed acting as both an on-ramp and an off-ramp onto the global
to obtain licensing that covers all 50 states; it’s prohibitive network.
enough (anecdotally, in the low millions of dollars) that
startups like CoinX mention their license status very promi- No centralized intermediary needs to exist in order to make
nently on their website. Around the world, the range is from this happen; each business is autonomous and settles all
tens of thousands of dollars in some ASEAN countries, all the debts with Bitcoin in real time. It may not be enough to outdo
way up to US$1-2 million in the Middle East. Western Union, but I wager it’ll be enough to get its attention.

Every country has a slightly different approach to Anti-Money

Laundering (AML) policies and Know-Your-Customer (KYC)
requirements, and the costs of complying with these laws will
have an impact on end-user pricing. A handful of companies
provide KYC-as-a-service at fairly reasonable costs (Identity-
Mind is one that focuses on bitcoin startups), which alleviates
that overhead somewhat. Some countries have stricter KYC
requirements than others however, so it will be necessary to
verify a startup’s compliance with the local AML council.

The Dream
We’re currently at the starting line of a marathon that tantaliz-
ingly includes US$42 billion in global savings at its end.

Imagine if every country had one of these loosely coupled but

fully interoperable bitcoin remittance brokerages, each one

9
CHAPTER TWO

The Invisible
Bitcoin
Solution

Bloom works primarily with established remittance

businesses, which are already providing a traditional
money transfer service, and teaches those businesses
how to leverage Bitcoin to reduce their foreign exchange
costs and speed up their settlement processes.

In most cases, these business savings are then passed

on to the customers, drastically reducing their fees. The
goal is to bring the benefits of Bitcoin to as many people
as possible — even if they don’t necessarily know that
they are using Bitcoin.
 Like most young technologies and processes, setting up a
Bitcoin remittance corridor between two countries requires
several components. In most cases, this means several
remote companies working in concert. Each component plays
a major role in the remittance chain and needs to be reliable
in order for the chain to operate in a sustainable fashion.

The First Mile

The most common way that migrant workers send money is
through remittance outlets or agents. Often this requires an
The Payphil team in Seoul manages the First Mile for South Korea, and is
actual physical visit to a shop. In more sophisticated locales the most successful Bitcoin remittance company to date. (Photo courtesy of
(South Korea, for example), however, this “first mile” has Sanghyun Lee.)

been replaced by a Facebook chat followed by a domestic

bank deposit. It’s the First Mile partner’s job to manage KYC processes for
their sending customers. They may set amount thresholds
Instead of taking a bus to the physical shop, migrant workers and daily or monthly limits, in compliance with the require-
in Seoul chat with the agent over the phone, or through ments of their own jurisdiction.
Facebook Messenger or KakaoTalk, and provide the details
of their recipient there. The agent then replies with a quote In South Korea, Payphil acts as the primary First Mile
in Korean Won (KRW), which the sender must pay within the provider, handling all outbound Korean transactions. Through
day in order to initiate the transaction. South Korea’s banking the Bloom platform and the Bitcoin blockchain, they can send
system allows most of these small payments to be settled to any participating Last Mile partner. It’s worth mentioning
in a matter of seconds, and once the agent has received that, without the Bloom platform, any remittance business
confirmation that the KRW has been deposited, they initiate may still employ the blockchain to connect directly with other
the actual cross-border remittance. overseas Bitcoin businesses. However, they would need to

11
 integrate with each new partner in turn, instead of plugging country), and in the Philippines this involves connecting to 35
into the single API offered by Bloom. banks and four major cash pickup networks. Each of these
payout channels have drastically different service fees (some
Other First Mile providers that are connected to the Bloom are less than US$1 and others cost over US$5), so being
network include Bitspark in Hong Kong and Malaysia, able to represent this price disparity in a consistent manner
CoinPip in Singapore, Pay86 in China, and EasyPadala is key.
in Canada. Some First Milers can facilitate a two-way
remittance channel, processing both inbound and outbound Once the payment has been successfully forwarded to either
transactions. a bank or cash pickup channel, the Last Miler signals that the
remittance was successful, informing the recipient via SMS
and email that their money is now available. Meanwhile, the
First Miler informs their sending customer on their side of the
The Last Mile world.

Once the remittance has been initiated, the “last mile” partner Bloom acts as the primary Last Mile provider for the Philip-
receives the instructions, reviews the beneficiary details, then pines, and thus handles inbound remittances to Philippine
forwards money to one of several possible channel providers. recipients from a variety of different countries. (As of
November 2016, this includes South Korea, Singapore, Hong
In the Philippines, only about 25 percent of adults have bank
Kong, China, Australia, and Canada.)
accounts, so the most common way to accept overseas
remittances is via cash pickup outlets. These outlets include In practice, there may be any number of Last Milers in a given
pawnshop chains (Cebuana Lhuillier, for example) or logistics country, and indeed the Philippines is fortunate to be the
companies (LBC); in aggregate, there are over 11,000 such home of three other Bitcoin-friendly players: Coins.ph, Rebit.
outlets around the country. ph, and Paylance.ph.

A Last Mile partner’s role is to connect with as many payout

channels as possible in its home country (the destination

12
The full cash-in/cash-out workflow,
as settled via Bitcoin.
13
 The Origin Exchange Country Exchanges Currencies
Nigeria NairaEx NGN
Using Bitcoin as a settlement medium can be initially Singapore Quoine SGD, USD
challenging to set up, but is almost immediately beneficial South Korea Bithumb, Korbit KRW
as soon as it’s functional. Being able to instantly settle a
Thailand BitcoinExchange THB
remittance through Bitcoin means that businesses can avoid Thailand
having massive cash reserves sitting in a destination country.
UAE BitOasis AED
Instead, transactions can be paid for in real time, without
United States AllCoin, GDAX, Gemini, USD
even needing to go through international wire transfers.
Poloniex
Some well-known examples are listed in the table below. Vietnam VBTC VND

Country Exchanges Currencies

Australia BTCMarkets, AUD, USD
The first step to using Bitcoin in this manner is to find an
IndependentReserve
exchange (or in limited circumstances, a broker) where
Canada Kraken, QuadrigaCX CAD, USD
the First Mile provider can purchase BTC in exchange for
China BTC38, BTCC, Huobi, CNY, USD their local currency. Most countries have local order book
OKCoin exchanges that enable this.
European Union Bitstamp, BTCE, CEX, USD, EUR
HitBTC, Kraken The First Miler buys Bitcoin from these exchanges, and either
Hong Kong Bitfinex USD deposits it with the Last Miler on a pre-funding basis, or uses
India Unocoin INR it to pay for a remittance after the fact (post-funding).

Indonesia Bitcoin.co.id IDR

Japan Bitflyer, CoinCheck, JPY, USD
Quoine
Mexico Bitso MXN

14
 The Settlement Process consumed. In technical terms, the Last Mile partner has
a liability of PHP450,000 and must secure this deposit on
Because Bitcoin can be sent in a matter of seconds from behalf of the First Miler.
one party to another (see zero-confirmation transaction), it’s
easy to pay for a remittance ad hoc. In practice, however,
most high-volume remittance businesses would prefer to
simply pre-fund their balances with Bitcoin, allowing them to The Destination Exchange
only perform two to three large funding transactions per day,
The Last Miler, amongst its other responsibilities, must
instead of 500 small ones.
also ensure that the bitcoins it receives can be sustainably
This is still vastly superior to the old method of wiring converted into local currency as it’s coming in. Liquidity varies
US$1,000,000 to a destination country, waiting three banking drastically from country to country, and it is often difficult to
days for it to arrive, and then being subjected to an unpredict- ensure that a large sale of bitcoins won’t cause the local price
able exchange rate when it gets converted to local currency. to drop precipitously.

As an example: the First Miler might choose to send 10 BTC In contrast with the First Miler, whose primary action is to buy
to the Last Miler at the beginning of the work day. (At current BTC, the Last Miler is almost exclusively selling BTC on a
rates, this is equivalent to US$9,000). daily basis. Ideally, there’s a local exchange where the Last
Miler can quickly liquidate its BTC, but not every country has
The Last Mile partner quotes them a local rate for the 10 one of these just yet.
BTC (e.g., 450,000 in Philippine Pesos), and as soon as it’s
confirmed by the blockchain, that local currency is added to Notably, the Philippines is a huge destination for bitcoins and
the First Miler’s spendable balance. yet does not have any significant exchanges. Due to the lack
of liquidity in young markets like the Philippines, there is often
The First Mile partner now has PHP450,000 to draw down no way to sell all of the incoming BTC without taking losses.
on as the remittances come in, and they can top up as it’s

15
 The current estimate is that the Philippines sees about 800 The perfect scenario, of course, is that a Last Miler also acts
to 1,000 bitcoins entering its “borders” each day looking for as a First Miler for a different corridor, as is the case with
buyers. At current rates, this is around US$700,000 daily, or Bloom. Although Bloom receives hundreds of BTC each
US$21,000,000 every month. There simply isn’t enough local day, it may choose to use some of those coins to pre-fund
buy pressure to absorb that much Bitcoin, and this imbalance Last Mile partners in China, Australia, or Vietnam, instead of
will continue to exist for as long as the Philippines continues selling it all.
to rely on migrant workers’ remittances for a large part of its
GDP. With each new node in the network, it becomes less and
less necessary to constantly liquidate BTC for local currency.
Instead, Bitcoin could flow freely from country to country,
dispersing and reforming all across the region in an ever-ex-
The Arbitrage Web panding web of real-time settlement.

Without enough channels to liquidate locally, Last Milers must

find other places to sell their incoming BTC. Typically this
involves selling their coins on exchanges or brokerages in
other countries, and receiving USD in payment.

This is a challenging solution, as it implies the presence of

a large cash reserve to facilitate international trading, and is
subject to all sorts of hurdles such as bank delays, regulatory
issues, and FX volatility.

A Last Miler might liquidate their coins on an exchange at a

small profit, but then still have to wait three banking days for
the USD to be transferred to their bank account in their home
country. This type of trading could be viewed as arbitrage
trading, although that implies that one is prioritizing prof-
it-seeking as opposed to speedy liquidation.

16
CHAPTER THREE

Does the
Bitcoin Price
Matter?

For many Bitcoiners, the price runup over the last

quarter of 2016 was reminiscent of a similar surge in late
2013 — the notorious US$1200 spike that culminated
with the implosion of MtGOX. The difference, of course,
is that this feels like a long-awaited recovery rather than
an unexpected bubble.

But price trends don’t affect Bitcoin remittance startups

in the same way as they do Bitcoin wallet companies or
traders. Why? Because of an inconvenient dependence
on archaic financial infrastructure.
 The graphic above over-simplifies what is actually a fairly The reasons for this are esoteric and tedious, but the simplest
complex settlement process when building a Last Mile way to encapsulate it all is that banking well and truly sucks
solution in the developing world. In it, we see that the First in developing countries. Unable to make small, real-time
Mile Partner is sending BTC to Bloom, and Bloom is sending transfers cheaply, businesses are forced to park funds with
PHP through the various payout channels in the Philippines their partners in large, inefficient batches, and then draw
(banks, cash pickup chains, etc). Only through those chan- down from these balances as the need arises.
nels can fiat actually make its way to the hands of the final
beneficiary of each remittance. It’s inefficient because predicting how much to leave with a
given channel is difficult, so one must always err on the side
What the graphic doesn’t illustrate is the fact that Bloom of overestimation.
actually has to pre-fund those payout channels in order to
make disbursements more expeditious. In reality, PHP is This challenge is somewhat similar to what a traditional
never being forwarded to the payout channels in the singular remittance business like Moneygram or Western Union
neat workflow depicted above. The PHP is already there. In faces everyday. They have capital sitting in over a hundred
some cases, it’s been sitting there for days or weeks, waiting countries around the world, and within each of those coun-
to be used. tries, they have smaller caches of funds sitting with local
payout channels, all waiting to be consumed by incoming

18
 remittances. The difference is that Moneygram has the capital case from 2014 to 2015, during which time you were often
to throw around and can thus afford to build out their network punished for holding Bitcoin for more than a few hours by the
this way, whereas your average crypto startup typically does downward trending price.
not.
You could receive bitcoins from your first mile partners in the
Bitcoin gives us a better solution to the international settle- morning at US$300 and by the evening it was worth US$294,
ment challenge, but it can not change the situation locally, shrinking to 98 percent of its acquisition cost and erasing
where fiat is the only game in town. your profit margin along with it. Back then, BTC was like a hot
potato that no one wanted to hold on to for very long, least of
What does all this imply for a remittance startup receiving all a young Bitcoin remittance startup with massive working
settlements in Bitcoin? It means that you rarely have a capital requirements.
chance to benefit from price spikes.
The opening week of 2017 saw some fairly massive fluctu-
Much of a Bitcoin remittance startup’s capital is distributed ations as well, with the price skyrocketing to US$1,150 on
across its payout channels, and there’s a need to replenish the back of financial pundits lauding Bitcoin as the best-per-
those reserves on a regular basis. As soon as Bitcoin arrives forming investment of 2016.
at the start of the workday, there’s often a mad rush to sell it
off for local currency, then distribute those funds to the rapidly After a few days testing the US$1,200 all-time-high, the
emptying balances at the various payout points. market began to lose its nerve and, as is typical for Bitcoin, it
reconsolidated in the most violent manner possible. Over the
The real-time Bitcoin price rarely makes an impact because next two days, the price thrashed about like a toddler on a
the liquidation is so quick. sugar high, losing US$200 in a matter of hours, and triggering
an investigation by the Chinese government.
Of course, the other way to look at this process is that
the liquidation has to be quick. Bitcoin trended upwards Such is the life of a volatile asset.
throughout nearly all of 2016, so holding coins instead of
selling them immediately was the correct move over 90 The trial by fire that was 2014 (or brief instances of extreme
percent of the time. However, this was most certainly not the volatility like January 2017) has done nothing to change our

19
 Take a random walk down Bitcoin memory lane with this price chart from
99Bitcoins.com. Each numbered indicator is a historical event that had
minds about this business model, however. If anything, it some effect on the price at the time. See the interactive chart and be
has solidified our opinion that remittances settled via Bitcoin enthralled at https://99bitcoins.com/price-chart-history/.
represent a very viable solution for the money transfer
industry, because it worked even when the price was in a
state of freefall.

At the start of this chapter we asked if the price matters to a

Bitcoin remittance startup. By liquidating it as soon as you
receive it, you’ve ensured that it doesn’t.

20
CHAPTER FOUR

Bitcoin
Regulation
Around the
World
Bitcoin’s growth over the past seven years has not gone
unnoticed by regulators and government institutions.
Although no country has officially recognized the
cryptocurrency as actual “money,” there’s some debate
as to whether Bitcoin companies should be considered
“money service businesses” (MSBs).

Photo courtesy of Carst van der Molen

Licensed via Creative Commons
 enhanced reporting requirements. And everywhere you look,
De-risking MSBs there are anecdotes from decades-old remittance businesses
losing their accounts simply because banks didn’t want to risk
In 2013, the US Department of Justice unveiled a new initia-
working with them.
tive rather aggressively called Operation Chokepoint, through
which the DOJ could conduct investigations into “high-risk” The prolific writer and remittance expert Faisal Khan refers to
businesses via their bank accounts. Critics referred to it as a this as “strangulation by regulation,” an overreaction from the
“thinly veiled ideological attack on industries that the Obama banks for fear of being tapped as “accomplices to the crimes
administration doesn’t like.” incurred on the MSBs’ side.”

But which industries were targeted? Categorized amongst the The waters are especially murky for young Bitcoin busi-
high-risk merchants like ammunition vendors, escort services, nesses, whose very nature implies operating within a gray
and online gambling businesses, were remittance companies area of the law.
or MSBs. Once identified, a bank could be pressured to shut
down any of those businesses’ access to financial services,
sometimes even without due process.
Bitcoin Regulation
Operation Chokepoint was officially terminated in early 2015,
after the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Bitcoin’s growth over the past seven years has not gone
readjusted its position on the matter, encouraging banks to unnoticed by regulators and government institutions. Although
“take a risk-based approach in assessing individual customer no government has officially recognized the cryptocurrency
relationships, rather than declining to provide banking as actual “money,” there’s some debate as to whether Bitcoin
services to entire categories of customers.” companies should be considered MSBs. The most likely
outcome of all these discussions is “yes,” although financial
However, reports of legitimate money service businesses regulators worldwide seem to be maintaining a wait-and-see
losing their bank accounts continue to this day. Halfway approach.
across the world, its effects are still being felt. In the Philip-
pines, Metrobank notably attempted to de-bank two MSBs in In May 2016, Japan issued its first set of regulations for
May 2016 even after both businesses had complied with its Bitcoin exchanges, along with some clarifications regarding

22
 how the law views cryptocurrencies. Amendments to Japan’s Although the US has led the world in terms of investments
Payment Services Act, promulgated in June, defined Bitcoin made in Bitcoin companies, its regulatory environment has
and other virtual currencies as “property value that can be proven too stringent for all but the hardiest and most well-
used by unspecified persons for payment of equivalent value funded of startups to withstand. It’s a constant source of
for purchased goods, rental fees, or services [...] and that is chagrin for many US-based Bitcoiners.
transferable via an electronic data processing system.”
The US Treasury’s FInancial Crimes Enforcement Network
Importantly, the amendments create a compliance framework office (FinCEN) released the first advisory on Bitcoin as far
around which Bitcoin businesses can adjust their respective back as 2013, and in August 2015, the “Bitlicense,” a busi-
models. Other countries are not quite as lucky. ness license governing the operation of Bitcoin exchanges
in New York, came into effect. By September, the first such

The coveted BitLicense allows the bearer to participate in the business

of crypto-money transmission, and is given out by the New York State
Department of Financial Services. To date, Circle Internet Financial (Circle.
com) is the only recipient of the license.

(Photo courtesy of Circle Internet Financial)

23
 The Isle of Jersey in the English Channel may be one of
the most unlikely places to register your Bitcoin startup,
but it’s probably more friendly than your home country.
(Photo courtesy of bit.coin.je)

Bitlicense was issued to Circle Internet Financial, a startup The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC)
that had at that point raised over US$50 million in funding. announced in December 2016 that it would consider applica-
To date, Circle and Coinbase are the only two companies tions from fintech businesses as potentially being categorized
that have been granted the license, although some 27 other as “special purpose national banks,” which would eliminate
companies have applied. the need for individual state licensing.

While FinCEN monitors money transmitters at the federal In Russia, Bitcoin narrowly avoided a law in proposal
level, there are also state-level affairs to worry about. stages that would have made its use illegal in the country in
Traditional remittance businesses are expected to apply September 2016. The country’s finance ministry stated that
for licenses in 48 states in order to legally offer nationwide it plans to take a more “proactive approach in reviewing the
coverage, and this same requirement applies to both Bitcoin draft by involving experts in the field.”
and most fintech startups. The process of applying for each
license is both tedious and expensive, and industry profes- In Kenya, the central bank has maintained its position on
sionals have referred to it as the equivalent of “financial Bitcoin as an unregulated currency, and cautions its citizens
colonoscopy,” as detailed in this series by Marco Santori. against using it. This type of missive is something of a
boiler-plate announcement issued by many central banks
Fortunately, there are some efforts being made to streamline
this application process and open the doors for innovators.

24
 around the world, and doesn’t really indicate what their formal the Philippines exchanges that BTC for PHP, then Manila’s
policy will be. foreign exchange reserves have not improved.

The Nigerian response in contrast has been significantly As described in “The Numbers,” the Philippines relies heavily
more active. In December 2016, their central bank on remittances for its inbound USD, and although Bitcoin aids
announced that a committee had been formed to further in injecting value into the economy, it’s in the wrong currency
investigate this “phenomenal bitcoin,” with the primary ... at least in the eyes of the central bank.
goal being to better understand its impact on “the payment
system, safety and security of customer, money laundering.” Khan suggests that in order to make the Bitcoin remittance
model compliant with central bank reporting requirements,
Far north, the Isle of Jersey proclaimed its intent to become the easiest way is to sell the received bitcoins outside of the
“Bitcoin Island”, i.e., a hub for Bitcoin businesses looking for Philippines and then wire the USD back in. This would allow
a home. For the geographically-challenged, the Isle of Jersey the central bank to properly record the incoming value, in a
is a small tax haven just off the coast of France in the English currency that it recognizes.
Channel. The island nation recently announced its first
regulated Bitcoin fund, and seems like a promising solution What’s perhaps most fascinating about this hypothetical
for startups who haven’t had any luck within their own home solution is that it’s happening organically in the Philippines
country. right now, as described in “The Arbitrage Web.”

Necessity is indeed the gender-neutral progenitor of inven-

tion, as the politically correct saying goes.
The Central Bank Perspective
In this eye-opening piece again from Faisal Khan, he argues
that one of the reasons central banks around the world AML and KYC
don’t like Bitcoin is due to macroeconomics. If a sender
Operating without specific regulations means that Bitcoin
pays USD in the States to buy BTC, and then someone in
remittance companies must often guess what they must do in
order to be compliant.

25
 It’s important to remember that AML, KYC, and CFT (Coun- that his company Skry is working on exactly that, and it’ll be
tering the Financing of Terrorism) measures are meant interesting to see how quickly their analytics tools make it out
to deter criminal activity, and to aid in the investigation of into the wild.
suspicious activity. As explained by compliance expert Juan
Llanos, the primary crime deterrent is forcing customers to In terms of AML and KYC requirements, every country will
“disclose their identity,” which in theory makes bad actors have a slightly different approach, and Bitcoin remittance
“refrain from even attempting to penetrate the system.” (The companies should take care to comply with these guidelines
chilling effect it has on good actors is often not discussed and whether they are deemed MSBs or not. Regulation is an inev-
difficult to evaluate, however.) itability, and it makes sense to implement these processes
beforehand.
Interestingly, the era of the public blockchain has ushered
in a new style of monitoring, referred to as “KYT” or “Know For the uninitiated, the global auditing firm Pricewaterhouse-
Your Transaction.” While KYC processes only allow for the Coopers helpfully prepares an annually updated “quick”
identification of source and destination parties, the unprece- reference guide for AML and KYC requirements in every
dented transparency of the blockchain theoretically enables country, available in a single gargantuan PDF.
an equally unprecedented level of forensic analysis to be
It goes without saying that this chapter is not meant as legal
carried out on the transactions themselves.
advice and is simply a round-up of regulatory conditions
This kind of granular data capture — basically tracing the around the world, and how Bitcoin remittance startups fit
path of a Bitcoin as it changes hands (say from one terrorist within them.
cell to another) — is still largely theoretical. The classic
Consulting and retaining a qualified lawyer in your respective
example is the FBI’s famous seizure and forensic analysis of
jurisdiction is of course still the wisest action.
144,000 BTC from the online black market Silk Road, which
led them to one of the space’s most high-profile convictions
in 2013.

There’s no reason that it couldn’t happen again, with enough

compute power and a large enough dataset. Llanos writes

26
CHAPTER FIVE

Bitpesa and the

African Bitcoin
Mirage

When Bitpesa launched in early 2014, they were the

darling of the crypto community. Not only were they a
Kenyan startup using Bitcoin for remittances, but they
were plugging into M-Pesa, the poster child of the
mobile money industry, and one of its few unequivocally
successful implementations.

Photo courtesy of Ninara

Licensed via Creative Commons
 Bitpesa’s initial strategy was to acquire sending customers in
the UK with recipients in Kenya, using Bitcoin as a settlement
mechanism between the two countries. Once the bitcoins
had made their way to Kenya, they would then be converted
into the local currency and routed through the M-Pesa mobile
wallet system to any receiver in the country. It was a simple,
straightforward model, and had the potential to change the
way remittances entered Kenya’s borders.

Although it’s easily Africa’s most well-known Bitcoin startup,

BitPesa was actually preceded by another similar project
called Kipochi in mid-2013, founded by technologist Pelle
Braendgaard.

Kipochi built a wallet service that allowed people with M-Pesa

wallets to buy or sell BTC through basic SMS, and was an The BitPesa team in Nairobi (Photo courtesy of BitPesa)
easy way for customers to try out the cryptocurrency. Its
straightforward and frictionless concept prompted Mother-
fees in a corridor that traditionally charged over triple that
board.com’s now infamous proclamation that “33 percent of
amount. Their initial raise of US$700,000 was followed up
Kenyans now have a Bitcoin wallet.”
with an additional US$1.1 million a year later, as more inter-
ested investors began to pile on. Amongst them, crypto-spe-
Unsurprisingly, Kenyan regulators were not enthused with
cialists Blockchain Capital, Pantera Capital, Digital Currency
the possibility of 10 million citizens buying and selling an
Group, and the BitFury Group.
unregulated virtual currency, and Kipochi disappeared without
a trace in 2014.
CEO Elizabeth Rosiello, a New York native, recalls the media
coverage at the time. “We had an article in Bloomberg in
By then, the hype around the BitPesa solution was white-hot.
November that went everywhere just as the price went up,
Co-founded by Duncan Goldie-Scot, a prolific angel investor
and a microfinance pioneer, their website promised 3 percent

28
 saying, ‘Bitcoin in Africa for remittances—it’s going to kill trading. It has also expanded its platform to include payouts
Western Union!” in Tanzania, Nigeria, and Uganda.

By 2015, BitPesa had been joined by Beam, iGot, and “Now, we have certainly seen remittances as part of our
BitStake — three other bitcoin remittance startups that had customer segments, but it’s not the only segment, and I don’t
launched elsewhere on the continent in the hopes of lever- think it can sustain an entire business,” Rossiello explains.
aging on the growing excitement.
The game-changing impact of Bitcoin in Africa, so thoroughly
Of the four, only BitPesa remains operational in Africa to this mythologized by Western media, has proven to still be
day. Regarding their closure, the founders of Beam cited elusive.
a “lack of uptake related to the cost of exchanging bitcoin
into local currency, limited merchants accepting bitcoin as a
means of payment, and price volatility.”

In November 2015, BitPesa’s dependence on M-Pesa for its

last-mile disbursement proved to be somewhat of an Achilles’
Heel. That month, Safaricom, owner of the M-Pesa platform
and Kenya’s largest telco, suspended Bitpesa’s access to its
mobile money service, citing AML fears.

Although the startup attempted to fight it out, a Kenyan court

upheld Safaricom’s stoppage and deemed the startup “strong
enough as a company so that it does not require access to
M-Pesa to survive,” BitPesa later explained in a statement.

Today, BitPesa’s service is distinctly less customer-facing,

with a stronger focus on business payments and a broader
menu of services that include e-commerce and speculative

29
CHAPTER SIX

Bitspark vs.
Hong Kong

Hong Kong’s bustling population of 7 million only has

about 350,000 migrant workers, but on Sundays, it feels
like every single one of them has managed to cram into
the same 12 square kilometers of the Central district.
Their mission is always the same: to send money
back home to the Philippines or Indonesia in the most
affordable and secure way possible.

In the midst of this joyful chaos is Bitspark, a three-year

old remittance startup founded by Australians George
Harrap and Maxine Ryan.

Photo courtesy of Barbara Willi

Licensed via Creative Commons
 Bitspark began its life as a Bitcoin exchange in early 2014,
but quickly refocused on the money transfer problem when
they studied how big the market size in their own backyard
was. Each year, Filipino and Indonesian migrants working in
Hong Kong send a combined US$800 million back to their
respective home countries1.

With their market composed almost entirely of low-income

domestic helpers, Bitspark was forced to keep the high-tech
aspects of their service as far away from their customers as
possible.

Their cash-in/cash-out model was one of the first in the world,

and it correctly anticipated a model that other Bitcoin remit-
tance startups would also later employ, i.e., using BTC purely
as a back-end settlement mechanism, instead of a marketing
The Bitspark popup remittance kiosk in Worldwide House with some early-
gimmick. adopter Filipina customers. (Photo courtesy of Bitspark.io)

The pre-funding strategy was also a minor innovation first as of early 2017. Pre-paying for remittances in bulk is a much
piloted during Bitspark’s early collaborative efforts with better long-term solution.)
Rebit in the Philippines, a settlement strategy that (perhaps
unintentionally) made the whole process more resilient In its early days, Bitspark would set up a temporary kiosk
against increasing blockchain network fees the following year. in middle of Worldwide House, the busiest Filipino mall in
(Paying BTC for each individual remittance is untenable given the city, during the height of the Sunday chaos. From here,
the current recommended network fee of around US$0.15, Harrap and Ryan would take down customers’ names and
transaction details, and then trigger a Bitcoin transaction on
their laptops to their last-mile partner in the Philippines.
1 For more information on ASEAN remittance patterns, this study from the
ADB is a bit old, but still very instructive.

31
 Co-founder Maxine Ryan talks about their early experiences relevant with the government’s newly restrictive regulatory
and her unexpected journey with Bitcoin. “I never thought barriers to doing anything payments-related.”
that I would be interested in making it my mission to ensure
cheaper remittances worldwide, but it just makes me excited.” Additionally, opening a bank account is a particularly chal-
lenging thing to do in Hong Kong. “Bitspark was rejected by
Having tested the waters with a physical remittance shop and 12 banks before finding an account and even then operates
learning how money is currently sent by the existing services, much of its banking outside of HK.”
Bitspark set out to create an online platform for the remittance
shops themselves in early 2015. With each new one business It’s an opinion shared by some of the Bitcoin entrepreneurs
they signed up, they gained access to thousands of their and community members in the country, among them
customers who already used the shop, instead of trying to Leonhard Weese, president of the Bitcoin Association of
develop a market from scratch. Hong Kong.

The Bitspark remittance platform currently services 5 “The Hong Kong government has classified Bitcion as a
countries. In August 2016, the startup announced a major virtual commodity, and thanks to a [simple] regulatory and tax
partnership with Vitaxel Group, a publicly-traded multi-level framework, Bitcoin can easily be used and accounted for by
marketing company out of Malaysia. The deal may prompt Hong Kong businesses,” he explains. However, the banks are
them to shift their headquarters from Hong Kong to Kuala considerably behind in terms of “competition, innovation, and
Lumpur in 2017, a significant move for the two founders. risk appetite.”
Their startup was initially buoyed by the Cyberport incubation
“Hong Kong is a great place for your Bitcoin startup, unless
program, a government-sponsored support system that
you need a bank account,” Weese concurs.
included funding and office space, as well as the Accenture
Innovation Lab. Harrap believes that Hong Kong sees itself as a financial hub,
but “the truth of the matter is a digital business doesn’t need
But Hong Kong is not the fintech paradise many entrepre-
to ‘exist’ anywhere. The jurisdiction of choice will therefore be
neurs used to crow about, at least not in Harrap’s opinion.
that which can offer the most incentives for new companies.”
With Malaysia quickly becoming their main focus, he talked
about how Hong Kong was becoming “increasingly less

32
CHAPTER SEVEN

The South
Korean
Gold Rush

The Bitcoin remittance corridor initially developed by

Payphil connecting South Korea to the Philippines grew
explosively in 2016, powering nearly 20 percent of all the
personal remittances flowing between the two countries.
The impressive growth has prompted more and more
players to enter this arena — among them, large
established players such as KakaoTalk and Shinhan
bank.
 In June, Kakaotalk announced that it had bought a 40 percent
stake in the young Philippine startup Satoshi Citadel Indus- A Bridge of Bitcoins
tries (SCI). It was an uncharacteristic move for the South
The embattled digital currency Bitcoin is most often talked
Korean chat giant, valued at US$2.9 billion, for a couple of
about in the press for its extreme price volatility and fiery
reasons: (1) it was Kakao Venture Group’s first-ever overseas
internal conflicts, but in the Korea-to-Philippines corridor, at
investment, and (2) SCI is a Bitcoin startup.1
least, it’s purely an affordable way to transfer value across
The decision is puzzling unless you know something about borders.
how money moves between the Philippines and South Korea.
Startups on both ends of the corridor have been working
While there are only 60,000 Filipinos working in South Korea,
since 2015 to build a Bitcoin alternative to traditional methods
far fewer than in neighboring Japan (280,000), they collec-
like Western Union or bank wire transfers. Bitcoin is a
tively send over US$230 million in personal funds back home
convoluted technology whose underpinnings run the gamut
each year. Even more importantly, the modest size of the
of concepts from cryptography to economics to libertarianism,
diaspora brings with it some substantial implications, i.e., the
so the most successful strategies often involve keeping its
cost of sending money back home to the Philippines, bereft of
high-minded principles away from the average customers.
any local competition, is exceedingly expensive.
Instead, it’s used purely in the back-end as a digital bridge
Over the past two years, several businesses operating out of that connects the two ends of the transaction.
both Seoul and Manila have arisen to solve the challenge of
By late last year, the Bitcoin businesses operating in this
transferring personal funds between the two countries and, as
corridor were collectively showing a cost savings of more
the latecomer to the fray, the Korean conglomerate has some
than 50 percent for the average personal money transfer.
serious catching up to do.
US$200 transfers that used to cost US$12, now cost only
US$5.

1 An earlier version of this piece was published in Quartz in September 2016.

It has been edited and updated with new information.

34
 A Revelatory Success database of transacting customers related to this corridor
far exceeds 10,000 profiles, and it took only half that time to
Over the last two years, the volume of Bitcoin-powered grow to that size.
remittances between South Korea and the Philippines has
quietly grown to one-fifth of the total flow between the two With those numbers in mind, it’s easy to see how the KR-PH
countries — nearly US$40 million of the total US$230 million Bitcoin corridor could have grown to the calculated size. If
annually. (This estimate is calculated from privately disclosed anything, it’s probably an underestimation.
data from active players in the corridor, as well as Bloom’s
own first-hand customer volume from South Korea.)

The rapid growth of the KR-PH Bitcoin corridor has proven

A Most Expensive Proposition
difficult to believe for many industry pundits, who have long
In early 2016, both Viber and WeChat announced partner-
operated under the notion that any changes in the remittance
ships with Western Union, allowing US users to send money
space would take a much longer time. But breaking the
to non-US beneficiaries from within their respective apps.
estimate down to a more granular level makes it far easier to
understand and accept. The typical international money transfer requires loads of
communication between the persons on either end of the
The average Filipino sends US$400 every month from
transaction. The senders are often migrant workers — people
South Korea, about double the global average. Multiplying
who have temporarily relocated to find better paying jobs in
that number over a relatively modest base of 10,000 active
other countries — and their beneficiaries are family members
customers yields US$4 million monthly or US$48 million
or friends back home. Together, they have to calculate
annually.
exchange rates, synchronize amounts, collect personal
details, agree on a transfer method, and then confirm when
Acquiring 10,000 customers over a period of 24 months in
the cash has been sent and received.
a single country seems a reasonable task for any startup,
and in the case of South Korea, there are multiple startups
Over 230 million people send about US$500 billion in remit-
all acquiring customers in parallel. Indeed, Bloom’s own
tances each year in this way, and chat platforms are naturally

35
 The Viber/Western Union
remittance process still costs a
hefty amount of money

well-suited for enabling this kind of financial interaction. It’s a A Modicum of Trust
shame then that some of these early entrants feel almost ...
predatory. The average migrant worker sends US$200 back home every
month, which in many instances account for 20-40 percent of
When receiving US$20 from the US via the Western Union their monthly paycheck.
app hidden inside Viber’s menus, there was both a US$4
service fee as well as a four percent cost hidden in the The vast majority of Asian migrants are domestic helpers,
conversion to Philippine pesos. By the time the author had crewmen, and construction workers, so it’s hard to imagine
actually received the pesos from the local Western Union that paying US$12 or more per transaction is an acceptable
agent, US$24 had been reduced to less than US$19.15, a proposition. And yet, migrants continue to patronize the old
loss of nearly US$5. guard (Moneygram is another popular choice), presumably
because of brand loyalty that has been built up over decades.

36
 On the flip side, it’s simply too hard to discover which of
the plethora of new remittance startups they can trust, and
they’re in no position to experiment with their money.

Chat apps don’t have the same challenges as these

young startups, as Viber, WeChat, Kakaotalk, and the like
are already the custodians of their users’ most personal
communications. For them, the trust barriers are significantly
lowered.

Bitcoin’s role in the money transfer revolution is promising,

but its digital-only nature prevents it from having a much
larger impact. It can’t traverse countrysides and make its way
into homes without Internet connections, and it can’t magi-
cally turn itself into paper money when the need arises.

Contending with an offline population may prove the most

confounding aspect of the remittance puzzle. But whatever
the makeup of this new frontier in money transfers, an entire
industry is betting on Bitcoin and mobile messaging as
fundamental ingredients.

37
CHAPTER EIGHT

Abra: The
Uber of
Remittances?

When Bill Barhydt walked on stage at Launch Festival

2015, he was coming off the high of another money
transfer company, Boom Financial, which had raised
over US$30 million by the late 2000s.

Barhydt’s six-minute pitch was succinct and sexy, and

described a remittance concept that seemed like an
unattainable dream to most industry veterans: true peer-
to-peer international money transfer.

Abra went on to raise an impressive US$14 million later

that year, with an equally impressive list of investors that
included RRE Ventures and First Round Capital.
Photo courtesy of Benson Kua
Licensed via Creative Commons
 With the Abra app, a sender in the U.S. could locate an agent
(or a “teller” in Abra parlance) within their vicinity who could
accept their funds. Upon receiving the cash, the teller moves
an agreed amount of currency to the sender’s wallet, essen-
tially topping them up with the digital equivalent of the cash
they had just paid.

Once the digital cash was available, the sender forwards it Bill Barhydt unveils the Abra app at Launch Festival. See the original video here.
to a recipient in the Philippines (Abra’s main launch market),
can withdraw hard cash by sending it to their own bank
who must then find another teller in their area who can give
account, or through another teller.
them hard currency in exchange for the virtualized funds. The
tellers on both ends would theoretically charge a small fee for
But just as any marketplace must be anchored to real-world
their services, which in aggregate should still be lower than a
processes, Abra also must have some form of settlement
traditional cash-in/cash-out remittance.
mechanism for their tellers who are ostensibly out in the field
disbursing hard cash.
The idea is that the participating tellers can really be anyone
who has peso liquidity, in the same way that Uber’s fleet can
Once the tellers disburse funds to their customers, they
be made up of anyone with a reasonable vehicle. It theo-
need a way to be made whole. In the Philippines at least,
retically allowed Abra to circumvent the need for remittance
the settlement strategy appears to involve using some of the
licenses, since they were simply a marketplace connecting
existing local remittance businesses to pay the tellers back.
merchants with customers ... only in this case the product
being sold is a financial service. The irony is that it’s those same local remittance businesses
that Abra initially set out to replace.
In order to add money to their Abra app, Filipinos must make
a bank deposit to one of four participating banks, and wait Suffice to say that the utility of the app is fairly limited given
one to two business days for the funds to be credited. Once its current dependence on third parties that are, for all intents
topped up, they can send money to any other Abra user in and purposes, its competitors. The current offering is a far cry
either the US or the Philippines. In turn, the receiving user

39
 from the 2015 announcement that garnered so much interest, “Once Abra is live everywhere, we have the first p2p
but things are sure to change rapidly as Abra continues to payment app that will work across any two phone
expand globally. numbers,” he says. “There’s no other app on the
planet that does that.”
In person, Barhydt exudes the quiet confidence of a man who
has already figured it all out. He explains that they’ll be in 20
countries by November 2017.

40
CHAPTER NINE

OKLink’s
US$100M
Guarantee

The new remittance aggregator service from one of

the world’s largest Bitcoin exchanges, OKCoin, is as
ambitious as it is flashy. Offering to subsidize the first
US$100 million in service fees, it’s garnered a lot of
press and numerous early partners since its launch in
October 2016.

Photo courtesy of Yiannis Theologos Michellis

Licensed via Creative Commons
 In an October interview with Bitcoin Magazine, OKLink CSO wants to send pesos to the Philippines. ZipZap has BTC to
Jack Liu spoke effusively of the early buzz garnered by their pay for the remittance, but it doesn’t have a formal last-mile
young service. “We are thrilled with the reception OKLink has partnership with, for example, Coins.ph.
received from industry leading companies, and we hope to
support their growth further with this incentive promotion.” So instead of sending the BTC directly to Coins.ph, ZipZap
deposits the BTC in a custom multisig Bitcoin wallet gener-
The promotion he’s referring to is the one making all of the ated specifically for this transaction by OKLink.
headlines, both in the Bitcoin press and with traditional media
outlets. OKLink is subsidizing the first US$100,000,000 in The multisig wallet is a 2-of-3, and the three parties (ZipZap,
service fees that go through its platform. The numbers of Coins, and OKLink) all have one private key each. If both
zeroes at the end of that figure seem to have done their job: ZipZap and Coins are satisfied that the remittance is valid,
OKLink’s initial list of participating businesses is a who’s who they can jointly use their private keys to unlock the wallet and
of Bitcoin remittance companies. allow Coins to withdraw the funds. If there’s a discrepancy
or a disagreement, OKLink can act as an arbiter and use the
But what exactly does OKLink do? In this early stage, it’s a third key to move the funds to either party.
switch similar to the traditional SWIFT network, acting as a
bridge between one Bitcoin remittance startup and another. It’s an interesting solution, and it’ll be instructive to see if
(Importantly, where SWIFT only works with financial institu- it’s useful to have this kind of third-party arbitration in place
tions, OKLink does not have that limitation.) between remote partners. OKLink doesn’t currently charge
for this service — in fact it’s paying the costs on both ends of
Like the other startups profiled here, it uses BTC as a the transaction — and they haven’t mentioned how they plan
settlement medium between countries, but where the OKLink to make money after the US$100 million subsidy has been
Network differs is in its positioning. Instead of being one of consumed.
the businesses on either side of a remittance, it sits in the
middle, acting as a hub that connects the spokes formed by In November, OKLink announced that they had formed new
various other companies around the world. partnerships with a number of South Korean fintech startups,
connecting all of them with over 20 payout countries through
Here’s how it works in practice: A First Mile company (let’s the OKLink API.
say, the San Francisco startup ZipZap) has a customer who

42
CHAPTER TEN

Uphold,
AirTM,
and Latin
America
If you’re just joining the Bitcoin train, it’s probably hard
to imagine what the world of early 2014 was like. The
largest Bitcoin exchange at the time, MTGox, had just
imploded, and about US$450 million in customer coins
had gone missing.

The market reaction to this catastrophic failure was both

immediate and prolonged: Bitcoin would see its price
tumble down a series of cliffs from a US$1200 peak to
a US$180 floor over the next 12 months, shaking all but
the hardiest of investors to their very core.

Photo courtesy of Blok 70

Licensed via Creative Commons
 Upholding Value 2016 — your money would be left behind, languishing in its
Preventing such a precipitous loss of value was one of the fiat prison.
primary goals of Bitreserve, the startup launched by Halsey
Bitreserve raised close to US$10 million before going through
Minor in late 2013. Unlike most of the community, the founder
a major revamp in mid-2015. Anthony Watson, the former
of CNET wanted to emphasize Bitcoin’s use as a mode of
CIO of Nike, took over the CEO position, and rechristened the
transmission rather than a store of value, which immediately
company “Uphold.com.” It maintained the original vision of
put him at philosophical odds with purists and crypto-anar-
Bitreserve but did so with greater reach and a brighter color
chists.
palette.
Bitreserve’s product strategy was to mimic the function of a
Importantly, they launched the Uphold Connect API, which
Bitcoin wallet, while actually storing your coins’ value in your
allowed startups to build their own third-party financial
preferred fiat currency. Sending Bitcoin to a Bitreserve wallet
products on top of their expanding network. Uphold was now
would instantly peg it against, say, the US Dollar price at the
essentially a wallet-as-a-service platform, allowing young
time of transmission.
entrepreneurs to build verticals without making large invest-
If the USD price for Bitcoin was US$350 and you deposited 1 ments in the underlying infrastructure.
BTC, your Bitreserve account balance would read “US$350”
Two of those entrepreneurs were Antonio Garcia and Ruben
in perpetuity. When you wanted to spend some of those
Galindo Steckel, the founders of AirTM. “A year ago, [these]
bitcoins, Bitreserve would look up the USD-BTC price at that
two young guys from Mexico City interned at Uphold’s
point in time and dynamically convert your dollars to bitcoins
San Francisco office,” writes Tim Parsa, Uphold’s head of
as needed.
Global Strategy and Markets, in the company blog. “A few
This meant that you avoided losses if the Bitcoin price months later they presented an idea for an app built on top of
happened to fall, but the converse was also true. When the Uphold’s open API.”
price started to rise — as during the bullish markets of late

44
 Some have taken to Bitcoin mining as a clever (albeit poten-
The LatAm Environment tially illegal) way to leverage their country’s state-sponsored
electricity and then using the generated BTC to buy food and
Latin America’s relationship with Bitcoin has always been
other goods from Amazon.com. Others who work overseas
rather spicy. The respected Internet entrepreneur Wences
have begun sending bitcoins to their families, who would then
Casares founded one of the major Bitcoin wallets Xapo in
find local traders to give them cash.
Argentina in 2013. The company is noteworthy for being one
of the first to issue Bitcoin-backed debit cards, as well as
securing their customers’ funds by storing them in the Earth’s
upper atmosphere. Perhaps as a direct result of Casares’ AirTM’s Cashier Network
influence, the country hosts the one of the largest Bitcoin
community in Latin America. AirTM combines two ideas previously discussed in this book:
Abra’s human ATM concept and Uphold’s pegged currency
In January 2017, another Argentinian Bitcoin company, balances. It currently enables the flow of funds and exchange
Bitpagos (now Ripio), announced that it had raised US$1.9 of currencies in multiple countries, including Mexico, Argen-
million, proclaiming that the renewed excitement around tina, Venezuela, the US, and China.
Bitcoin had caused a 40 percent increase in their active user-
base in a single month. The startup offers a concierge service AirTM works by first connecting its customers with local
for cross-border money transfer, as well as a straight-up “cashiers” in their country who can accept their cash deposits.
Bitcoin wallet. Once the customer hands over their cash, the cashiers will
then send an equivalent amount of BTC to that customer’s
In Venezuela, it isn’t the cryptocurrency’s transmission balance on AirTM/Uphold.
capabilities that make it desirable so much as the fact that
it’s a currency that isn’t a bolivar. With their own currency in Once “in the cloud,” the customer can manage their funds as
a state of freefall — the VEF lost over 75 percent of its value they see fit. This strategy allows AirTM’s users to maintain
against the USD in 2016 — Venezuelans had been forced to their money in any currency they desired, which in the case
find creative ways to keep their heads above the water line. of Argentina and Venezuela, usually means anything other
than their own.

45
 Having cashiers that can focus on each
of their supported countries allows AirTM
to essentially facilitate self-service remit-
tances. As long the sending customer has
money in the cloud, they can forward it
to any beneficiary anywhere in the world.
That beneficiary will then coordinate with
their own local cashier to receive cash in
their desired currency.

Like Abra, one of the biggest questions

with AirTM has to do with regulations, as
regulators often tend to “duck-type” money
transmitters instead of looking closer. In
the eyes of a regulator, if it quacks like
a duck, it’s probably a duck, and will be The AirTM web interface uses simple cloud banking metaphors for
common user actions.
regulated as such. It’s unclear how they
will eventually categorize the ad hoc peer-
to-peer cash networks being enabled by
startups Abra and AirTM.

46
CHAPTER ELEVEN

Why Doesn’t
Western
Union Use
Bitcoin?
One of the most common questions asked at industry
conferences is why Western Union or Moneygram
or any of the other incumbents don’t just use Bitcoin
themselves, thus eliminating the potential competition
from young fintech startups.

The short answer is that Western Union doesn’t need

Bitcoin in its current infantile state. Conversely, if and
when Bitcoin reaches adulthood, the world would no
longer need Western Union.

Photo courtesy of Johan Fantenberg

Licensed via Creative Commons
 Western Union Market Share graph from research by SaveOnSend.com.
See the original article here.
The Colorado-based giant is often compared with
prehistoric animals by the Bitcoin community, and
although a little harsh, it’s not an altogether unfair
characterization when you consider how long it’s
been around. The Western Union empire is all of
165 years old, and has been transferring money
domestically within the United States since the
1870s. Their early dominance involved leveraging
their nationwide telegraph monopoly to send
remittance instructions from city to city in much
the same way we use payment APIs today.

Today their network includes over 500,000 phys-

ical outlets spread across 200 countries, which
facilitated over 261 million consumer-to-consumer
transactions in 2015. On the technology front, the
US$10-billion company was the first to launch its own set of Immobile Money Transfer
geostationary satellites, dubbed Westar, as far back as the
mid-1970s to facilitate its own internal communications. As discussed in previous chapters, the most practical way
to use Bitcoin today is as a settlement mechanism between
More recently, its newly-launched WUConnect platform remote remittance companies. The companies on both ends
allows social media and mobile messaging users to send of the transaction need to handle the BTC conversions on
money from within the user interfaces of their favorite apps, behalf of their customers.
including Viber and WeChat. (See the user workflow here.)
In the case of Western Union, both the sending and receiving
sides are owned by the same company, meaning that
settlement doesn’t need to take place over a transparent

48
 public network like the blockchain. Western Union is massive UK-to-PH remittance service takes two days and sports an
enough that it can benefit from its own internal “network unpredictable exchange rate. It would appear that even a
effect,” balancing large cash reserves between all the coun- remittance startup with over US$50 million in funding has
tries that it has presence in. difficulty making these types of corridors efficient.

When facilitating a remittance from San Francisco to London,

the dollars paid by the sender never have to leave the US.
Western Union only needs to draw down from its GBP Regulatory Uncertainty
reserves in the UK to pay the receiver, which can be done
instantly and with no costs. Likewise, when a Londoner wants Even if Western Union had any interest in employing Bitcoin
to send cash to the states, Western Union only needs to draw (perhaps as a programmatic way to instantly fine-tune their
from its dollar reserves there; the pound sterling stays in cash reserves across their 200 territories), the current unreg-
country. ulated status of cryptocurrencies make it a risky proposition
for a publicly-traded company.
In this manner, money is not actually moving between one
nation and another, Western Union only needs to adjust With every customer transaction being scrutinized by multiple
its balances in each territory. This “net-balancing” strategy government agencies in multiple countries, it’s hard to
is coincidentally what another well-known fintech startup imagine that a money transfer business would want to add to
Transferwise employs for its own remittance service, and can their compliance headaches by using Bitcoin.
be even cheaper than Bitcoin.
That doesn’t stop them from keeping a close eye on the
The disadvantage is that it’s tremendously capital-intensive, space however. In April 2016, prominent blockchain investor
and difficult to pull off in corridors where cash flows are more Digital Currency Group announced that Western Union had
uni-directional. For example, balancing between the UK and joined its latest round both as investors and advisors. For
the Philippines would be a challenging proposition, since now at least, that seems to be the extent of their participation.
there are over 100,000 Filipinos sending cash home from the
UK every month, but there are only a handful of British expats
doing the same from Manila. Consequently, Transferwise’s

49
 Postscript
They say that there’s nothing quite like an idea was invaluable: Faisal Khan, Yakov Kofner, and
whose time has come, and I’ve found this to be true Hugo Cuevas-Mohr.
even for relatively modest ideas ... like, for example,
writing a book about the Bitcoin remittance industry. Visit http://www.bloom.solutions/book for updates
The bones of Reinventing Remittances have on new editions. (You may also wish to order a
existed in various forms for a couple of years now, print version of the book through there ... unless
but it was only during the tail-end of December of course, you’re already reading this on the
2016 that I finally found the momentum to put some print version, in which case, thank you, you’re
real meat on it. awesome.)

Like the rest of this young industry, this book is If you would like to contribute a case study to
a work in progress, and should be viewed as a this work, or god forbid, have spotted something
perpetually incomplete guide to an evolving subject. erroneous in these pages, please send an email
It’ll continue to be revised with new information, to luis@bloom.solutions, or call me out publicly on
new strategies, and new ideas as our collective Twitter via @helloluis.
knowledge grows.

In the preparation of these pages, the advice and

suggestions received from the following experts

50
 Online Resources
This industry is fortunate to have so many great
minds all contributing to its growth and sharing
their ideas freely. The following websites are
indispensable:

Faisal Khan (https://blog.faisalkhan.com)

SaveOnSend (https://saveonsend.com/blog)

Monito (https://monito.com/blog)

PeopleMove
(https://blogs.worldbank.org/peoplemove)

International Money Transfer Conference

(http://imtconferences.com/blog/)

Remittances Gateway
(https://www.remittancesgateway.org)

Photos licensed via Creative Commons 2.0

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

51
APPENDIX

Joining
the Bloom
Network

Throughout this book, we’ve described the work that We’ve used the term “Eastern Union” to describe this
Bloom and many other Bitcoin startups have developed concept in the past, but that’s just a joke meant to
on top of the blockchain. Over the following pages, we highlight the difference with the old monopolistic way of
discuss the mechanics of joining the Bloom Network building remittance networks.
itself.
We’re not interested in building another union, we’re
It’s worth mentioning that participants in the Bloom trying to start a revolution.
Network are always non-exclusive to the system. It’s our
goal to form a network of loosely coupled nodes, all of
whom are free to join, leave, and rejoin the system as
they see fit.
 This is a guide for integrating with the Bloom remittance
network, and is meant for new partners and institutions who
want to work with Bloom directly. It is specific to Bloom’s
business methods, and should not be taken as a general
primer for working with other similar networks.

The Bloom Web Application

Every organization that joins the Bloom remittance network is
issued a Partner account that represents their business entity,
as well as multiple child user accounts that represent their
administrators and agents. The main Partner Dashboard page, which provides a simple view of the most
recent transactions made on a given day, as well as their respective statuses.
In most cases, a Partner account is assumed to be a First
Mile entity. The Bloom platform in its current state is built as a
global disbursement system, so the primary action performed For those users, we recommend integrating directly with
by Partners using the system is for issuing pay-out instruc- the Bloom API, which allows for seamless connectivity with
tions. existing infrastructure.

Bloom provides a simple Partner dashboard for monitoring

remittance statuses and balances, pictured in the slideshow
following. Using this dashboard, Partner users may create The Bloom API
and edit transactions, calculate costs, and top up their
Partners with in-house engineering resources may wish to
balances via Bitcoin. However, Bloom does not require
integrate their current dashboards and processes directly
any of its partners to use the dashboard directly, as most
with the Bloom API, which will reduce the cost of training and
established remittance businesses will already have their
operational overhead.
own systems for accomplishing most of these same tasks.

53
 The remittance details page, which indicates the status
of a given transaction as well as any information provided
about both the sender and the recipient. Pertinent
information such as the tracking number (in the case of
cash-pickup remittances) are also viewable here.

The Bloom JSON Web Service gives developers program- 4. Create, manage, and monitor transactions
matic access to the core functionality of the platform. Using
5. Calculate transaction fees
our RESTFUL API, a developer will be able to build applica-
tions that accomplish the following: 6. Retrieve lists of Payout providers and exchange rates

1. Create and manage Agents

Each API request must be in JSON format. The API token
2. Create and manage Senders and secret listed above is unique to each Bloom partner.
If you regenerate your token, you will regain access to all
3. Create and manage Recipients

54
 previously-created records once you update your application Admin
code to use the new token.
A user type belonging to the Agent entity, corresponding to
The base URL for the API is https://api.bloom.solutions/api/ a single employee working for the Partner. An admin can
v1/, and the full API documentation is located at https://bloom. manage remittances as well as pre-fund deposit balances.
solutions/developers.
Teller
Bloom has also built open-source libraries to expedite third- A user type belonging to the Agent entity, corresponding to a
party integration efforts with its API. single employee working for the Partner. A teller can manage
remittances but cannot manage deposit balances.
Ruby: https://github.com/imacchiato/bloom_remit_client-ruby

Rails: https://github.com/imacchiato/bloom_remit-rails
User
A user type belonging to the Agent entity, corresponding to a
single customer of the business. The “user” is interchange-
ably referred to as the “sender” in the API documentation.
API Entities
Recipient
Partner
An entity belonging to a User/Sender, corresponding to the
The business entity or organization, usually named similarly person receiving the remittance in the destination country. A
to the actual registered business name. recipient must have a valid mobile number in order to receive
notifications from the system.
Agent
A sub-group belonging to the Partner entity, which may Remittance
represent a single outlet or physical location controlled by the A transaction created by an Admin or Teller. It belongs to
Partner. a User/Sender, must include a Recipient, a Country, and

55
 a payout method. Importantly, it must indicate an amount Create a Recipient
greater than US$2, and unless otherwise agreed upon, must
A Sender has 1 or more recipients associated with their
be less than US$4,000. Remittances may have service fees
account. Recipients are scoped to each sender, and cannot
and FX costs embedded in them, depending on the chosen
be shared from one sender to another.
payout mechanism and amount to be sent.

Create a Transaction
Credit History
A remittance is a transaction between a Sender and a Recip-
Before creating any remittances, a Partner must have a
ient, facilitated by an Agent.
positive amount of credit on the system. Each subsequent
remittance is then debited from this balance. Whenever a
Monitor Transaction Status
Partner tops up their account, a Credit History record will also
be logged detailing the amount and balance after the top-up. After a transaction is created, its status may change to any
of the following: bank_error, incomplete, paid, completed,
rejected, refunded, cancelled, error, delayed, waiting, unpaid,
and outstanding.
Remittance Workflow
The typical remittance workflow is as follows:
Pre-funding Workflow
Create or select a Sender associated with
an Agent Each Partner must maintain a balance with Bloom before
it can send remittances. Each balance is maintained in a
Each Partner has 1 or more agents, which represent the
separate destination currency (e.g., PHP, AUD, CNY, etc.),
individual pay-in channels (kiosks, website, mobile app, etc)
and is not interchangeable. The Partner may choose to top
that the sender can interact with.
up any of these currencies as needed via BTC or USD.

56
 To top-up with BTC, the Partner admin needs to go to the Every new Partner begins with zero currency in their account
Account page for a given currency and look at the Invoice balance, and may send transactions through the API without
Address indicated there. The rate for a given currency pair topping up. Each subsequent remittance will deduct from their
(e.g., BTCPHP) is stated clearly, and is recalculated every 30 zero credits, until a negative threshold has been reached. By
seconds. default, this bottom limit is -US$1,000, but it can be adjusted
based on prior agreements.
Once the BTC is sent, an amount of currency is added to the
credit balance equivalent to the quoted rate. Bloom does not With a low negative threshold, a Partner can send remit-
wait for blockchain confirmations before adding the funds to a tances and settle with BTC after the fact, bringing their overall
given Partner’s balance. Typically, funds become available for account balance back to zero with each new topup.
use within 1-2 minutes of the Partner issuing the transaction
from their Bitcoin wallet.

A Partner may use up the funds in their balance for an API Support and Feedback
indefinite period of time. Bloom also extends a modest line
of credit to allow Partners to continue facilitating remittances Support requests and feedback regarding the Bloom API
even after they have consumed all of their funds. should be directed to hello@bloom.solutions.

Post-funding Workflow
Although Bloom does not explicitly support or encourage the
use of a post-funding workflow, the line of credit it extends to
trusted Partners does make this option possible.

57
When Bitcoin was created in 2009, its most obvious use
was as a way to send money across the planet as easily as
sending an email.

The potential benefits for the 230 million migrants all over
the world that send US$430 billion in remittances back home
each year could be enormous. But beyond all the rhetoric,
there is still the practical implementation that has yet to be
sorted out.

This book collects stories about the pioneering startups who

have been focusing on this exciting new space since 2013.
From Nairobi to San Francisco to Manila, each new company
brings us a little closer to the perfect solution: an affordable,
safe, and universally accessible money transfer network
unlike anything the world has ever seen.