The complexity of the new paradigm of cryptocurrencies is one of the biggest challenges against adoption. Whitout going further, some people barely know how to interact with a bank's interface through the Internet, especially the elderly. My grandmother sometimes asks me to help her make a transfer or something with her bank account.
There are a lot of applications on smartphones that allows people to send crypto to another wallet, without a computer. However, if we think about developing countries, not everyone has the possibility to buy a smartphone, or even the possibility to have an internet connection at home.
At the other hand, I think that if there is a technology that almost everybody posses no matter socioeconomic condition, is a phone, wheter it is a smartphone or not. Short message service (SMS) technology has reached a large percent of the world population because it has already some decades with us, unlike Bitcoin or smartphones.
According to the projection of the chart:
3500M of people on the world has a smartphone today (~45%).
According to this source:
+66% of people on the world has a phone or mobile device.
This percent could varying depending of the country, whether if it is an emerging economy or not. You can see detailed numbers on this article.
Therefore, smartphone users represents roughly 70% of the total phone users worldwide.
This percent will surely increase in the incoming years. However, on countries with emerging economics this growing could be far slower. That is why taking an advantage of this technology could be important on this countries regarding crypto adoption.
In my country (Venezuela), it is possible to make bank transfers via SMS. With some commands, you only need the phone number and ID number of the person who will receive the money. This service its often used because of the high demand of bank lines in stores, causing them to get slow sometimes. Nobody pays with cash (in national currency) on stores because of the hyperinflation, all payments are maded with debit card, SMS or cash dollars.
As long as I know, Dash is the only cryptocurrency that can be transfered using SMS messages. That service is called Dash Text. You only need the phone number or the Dash wallet of the other person. Bassically, your phone number is linked to a Dash address.
It would be great if this were possible with Hive or Leo, but I don't really know how Dash created this service or how it works in terms of technology and the processes that this would involve, and if this is possible with Hive (I guess it is).
According to dashtext.io, Dash Text is available on United States, Venezuela, Spain, Colombia and Brazil. Whit some simple commands it is possible to send any amount of Dash to other person. I used it before and it works:
I already wrote a post about Dash Text some time ago (it's in spanish).
One important barrier against this payment method is the collapse or deterioration of the mobile messaging services, which is a problem here in Venezuela, specially in small towns, were sometimes it is impossible to send a SMS message because of the lack of signal. But I guess this wouldn't be a major problem in other countries.
At the other hand, I think that the most important barrier is the paradigm shift and the fact that crypto has no reached the masses yet, at least not here in Venezuela (despite its one of the countries with major crypto adoption). Dash Text is great and it works, the problem is that few people know it or use it as a payment method. I think that could change in a few years.
In conclusion, I think that payments via SMS could be a great way to incentivize people to use crypto all over the world (specially developing countries) at least for micro-payments, maybe not with Bitcoin or Ethereum but with Dash, Doge or Hive, which are cryptocurrencies with lesser fees and faster transactions.
Do you know any other cryptocurrency that use SMS? Do you think Hive/Leo should have a dApp someday that allow tranfers via SMS?
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