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Ideally the terminal should be online, but we had a serious power outage in my country some years ago, and big chains switched to “offline mode”, I think in practice that means they queue the payment and send it to the clearing house once the power/connection is back. This is suboptimal because a customer can spend more money than they have, but the bank will just charge them overdraft fees or interests, so it’s not a serious problem. Another problem could be lack of fraud detection, but in my entire life, I have only witnessed one such power outage that took down the realtime payment system, so it’s unlikely a real concern, at least not for the big chains, they will just have to write off the fraudulent payments as the cost of doing business during a power outage (not sure there actually was any fraud committed during this window). Additionally, today small vendors can accept contactless payments via iPhone (yes, NFC, not that QR-code сгар), so the chance of them not having power/internet would be extremely unlikely. Although this is probably not yet available to Thai vendors.

I think Thailand has just been extremely slow at rolling out the payment infrastructure used by the rest of the world. I got a contactless debit card from Krungthai ~3 years ago, that is, I went to my branch and explicitly requested to swap my current card for one with NFC, as I had seen someone else with a KTB card and a “PayWave”-logo. But pretty much only Big-C truly supported this. At my local Rimping branch they had one terminal that could do NFC and I always had to ask for it, as it was placed behind the counter, unlike Big-C, which have the terminals facing the customer, so you just wave your card in front of it, as soon as the amount shows on the display. As for GooglePay, this is the exact same technology (as “PayWave”), but it’s an opt-in for the bank, presumably there is some revenue share between Google and the bank (and VISA/MasterCard), and that is why until now, no Thai bank have opted into neither Google nor Apple Pay. That they launch it initially only for credit cards seems to support this, as the vendor fee for credit cards is usually higher than for debit cards, so the banks are giving up a small percent of their fee to Google only for the high profit cards. In the E.U. interchange fees are capped at 0.11% for debit cards and 0.13% for credit cards (if I recall correctly), and this has helped tremendously in adopting cashless payments in the European Union, where it is ubiquitous in most countries.

A Thai I know had to open an account with a foreign investment bank and got Krungthai Bank to write them a reference letter basically saying they had maintained an account with them for some amount of time and a rough estimate of its balance, and “any assistance you may render to the above person would be appreciated”. But this is basically just to say that “as far as we know, this person is of good financial standing”, which is not the problem that foreigners are facing, when they are denied opening a bank account in Thailand, so such reference letter would likely be useless in the process of opening a new Thai bank account (for a foreigner).

Most likely, no-one cares. As I have said before, this line is just for some superficial AML screening. I have sent millions of baht to Thailand, and only when I send relatively small amounts via Wise, do I actually have to provide this “reason for funds”. And none of the money which did actually end up funding my condo, did I provide any “line” about them being for a condo purchase. There is however one caveat: Money for condo must be from abroad. If you use a money transmitter like Wise, there is a chance that you just receive money into your Thai account from their account in Thailand and then it does not count as being from abroad. Therefore in this case, it would be important to select “Purchase of property” as Wise should then ensure they don’t just do a domestic transfer, although I have not tested this myself.

The Ripple network uses 35 trusted validators to verify transactions, i.e. this network works with centralized authorities. You cannot run a Ripple node and start validating transactions. There is absolutely nothing new about this, e.g. the Internet Domain Name System (DNS), which was created 40 years ago, is also a distributed database with more than one authority. As for fees: You think it actually costs any meaningful amount of money to transfer money in the existing system? Most of my banks offer me free transfers. If you have high transfer fees then the issue is lack of competition, not actual cost of moving the money. As for eliminating nostro/vostro accounts, this is a good point/advantage. But this comes from all operators agreeing on using the same ledger. In Europe banks sort of already do this with ECB, so within Europe we can transfer money between arbitrary banks (in EUR) because they just move their reserves within the ECB’s ledger. With Ripple, all banks would instead need to store their balance on the Ripple network, so it’s not really different, and the issue is not technical, rather, most banks do not want to move all their transactions to a ledger controlled by a private company.

Mention one crypto that provides actual utility, i.e. creates actual value, solves a problem (that we actually have) faster/cheaper than existing solutions, etc. Common for all of them are, that no-one can answer this. Take the video clip that was posted, interviewer asks, and the response is just that the haters spread FUD, rather than address what problems crypto actually solves. I have blocked @Neeranam so I don’t know if his posts have improved, but he also just used to rant about “the haters” and tell us we were just jealous because we had missed the boat, etc. A few posters did actually try to explain where value was coming from, but it was done by referring to various yield farming schemes and play to earn games, of course we now know for sure that these schemes were not sustainable, but even back then, if you had just a bit of knowledge about math and economics, it was clear that in the best case “value” was just transferred (zero-sum game), no value was being created. Where value is created is in regulatory arbitrage, for example Thailand has currency controls, so it’s hard to move money out of Thailand. This can be done via crypto, and imagine I have made millions in Thailand that I need to get out of the country, but I do not have proper documents, I might be willing to pay 10% for someone to facility this, and indeed, I can do that, but those 10% (of the money I move) do not go to people who “invested” in coins years ago, it goes to those who “help me”, that is the exchanges and the miners, the exchange fee is easy to find, the transaction fee depends on the blockchain, and some also have block rewards, so basically everyone holding the token pays indirectly for my transfer (via inflation), this is something few people understand, but a transaction on e.g. the Bitcoin blockchain costs hundreds of dollars (if not more), because it is such an inefficient network, I may only pay $2 for this, the rest is paid by issuing new tokens to the miner (block reward), but that increase the total supply, which should actually devalue the token (I know Ethereum also burn coins to counter this, but it’s still an “unfair” system).

But those chains can’t do anything which can’t be done faster/cheaper by a central authority. They are “better” than the fully decentralized version, but that is only because they are partially centralized, a few of them even rely on central nodes. No, I am talking about governance tokens or the “native token”. Every chain has its own token, you need some way to incentivize people to run the software, this is done by giving them some token, and they try to give this token value by providing “yield” when staking it, or burning tokens to decrease supply (in some misguided belief that scarcity alone gives something value). But no-one will use it, if it is not a better system. Practically no-one currently is using it. it’s just a speculative non-productive asset, I think it was @happydreamer above who admitted that it serves no purpose what-so-ever, but they still invested because “what if…”, i.e. thinking that in the future, it will take over the world. Many people mistakenly think that there is value there, and that is why they invest, and they think that because we have people like the proponents on this forum who talk like it is a revolution, not realizing just how bad crypto actually is, and also not realizing that many of the things they claim about the existing system, is just not true, i.e. it does not take five days and cost twenty dollars for me to send money abroad with the existing system. These people tend to forget they probably have a Apple or Google Pay on their phone, and they can pay with that in majority of stores in majority of countries, and the amount is instantly deducted from their account, even with a currency conversion, if required, and they think having to show a QR code, wait ~20 minutes, and pay an unknown amount of money for the transaction, which depends on the current network load, is a better system…

Current price: $16,570 / 3 ≈ $5,523. You need to go back to May of 2019 to reach that price, so more like “3 times what it was 3½ years ago”. I’m making no price predictions though, but a lot of dominos have fallen over the last 6 months, and I would be surprised if more are not to come down. Take Tether, they have almost $70 bn. in liabilities which they claim are secured by matching assets, they had exposure to FTX, Celsius, etc., they claimed to hold commercial papers on their balance sheet, and they have apparently had zero loss during 2022? That would make them the world’s greatest investors, but if you look at who actually run the place, it’s just a couple of people with a real shady past. Look at the reporting coming from FTX, they seemed to actually wanting to run a legit business, they thought they had assets of $9 bn. or so, but it turned out it was closer to zero…

These things have “foundations” behind them that sit on huge amounts of their own token and it’s based on consensus with whoever holding the most tokens, having the most votes, and also getting the largest share of new tokens. You really think that is a better system than what we have?

I am not trying to convince you, I am just telling you why some like the Wise card. As for the fees though, there is no forex done by VISA/MasterCard if the card provide a sufficient balance in the requested currency, thereby forging them. But yes, the network is not offered for free, when you use it in shops, the shop pay the fee, if you use it in an ATM, you have a quota of free withdrawals per month (sans the potential ATM fee) which Wise is covering out of their pocket. Anyway, use whatever card you like!

I read the thread and only saw one speculate about it. I am quite sure that Thai banks would not waiver their “foreign card” fee. Thai ATMs even have fees for Thai debit cards if either you are in another province than your branch, or you make (I think) more than 3 withdrawals per month not in your bank’s ATM (and some ATMs are not even part of this network, so they will always have a fee).

How much are you planning to buy? Are we talking tens of millions? Otherwise, it doesn’t seem like sufficient hedge against the imminent collapse of our world economy ???? Anyway, as for your questions: What you bring into Thailand in foreign currency, you can take out again. All you need here is the bank records. It doesn’t matter what you write when you transfer money into Thailand, that line is simply for AML screening. And if your bank is decent, you can go to your bank in five years or so, and ask them to please make a document with all the foreign money you have brought into Thailand. I did that when I needed documentation for the Land Office, I had transferred millions into Thailand, but over many years, from different sources, and into two different accounts, so it took half an hour or so, but they found enough incoming money to total the amount I needed for my condo purchase. That said, if you are transferring it all in in one go, better get the Foreign Exchange Transaction form from your bank, so you won’t have to bother them in five years and hope they are as service minded, as they were with me. As for any profit you make on your gold, that will be a problem to get out, because that is “sort of” money made in Thailand, so you can’t transfer them out with proper documentation for how it was made. But don’t worry, I think your profit will be below the amount you can just take out with you in cash, if you actually make any profit ???? And good luck with your gold!

Since people can use their Wise card in most major stores/chains now, I wonder, does it also work with Apple Pay? Haven’t been to Thailand since COVID-19, so curious how the situation is now. I had a PayWave (contactless/NFC) card from Krungthai last I was in Thailand, and it was not exactly widely accepted, though worked in Big-C. I heard that PromptPay is what took off during the pandemic (rather than PayWave/NFC/contactless), but also read that 7-Eleven waived their minimum purchase amount to accept (contactless?) cards. The “problem” is that vendors typically pay 3% for accepting VISA/MasterCard. First time I was in Thailand, pretty much everyone wanted me to pay 3% extra, if I wanted to pay by VISA. A Thai debit card does not have this steep fee, which is why many shops started to take Thai debit cards, but still didn’t want to take the foreign cards. As for Thai debit cards, you may have seen some stores have a row of payment terminals like the photo below, that’s because if they use the bank’s own machine to take payment, there is no (or low) fee.

Credit card reward programs, cashback, etc. is a U.S. thing. So when “we” (people outside the U.S.) select payment cards, it’s not about rewards, but things like better exchange rates, e.g. the “benefit” with the Wise card is that it is a multi-currency card and you generally get a better rate than by using your bank’s card. VISA/MasterCard has a forex rate, where Wise is probably a little better, but your bank may add an additional “hidden” fee, often 1-2%, making the exchange rate much worse than by going with Wise (or outside Thailand, Revolut).

They have a slightly better rate than Wise, but then they add a “rare currency fee” of 1%, so it ends up being cheaper going with Wise. The ATM fee is for “foreign payment cards”, so you will pay it even if you have a THB balance.

Then please quote that answer. The question was: What can crypto/blockchain do faster/cheaper than J.P. Morgan. Bitcoin does 3-4 transactions per second, and that is a technical limitation. MasterCard does around 5,000 and has never had a congestion issue, i.e. they can scale it based on demand, Bitcoin has regularly seen congestion, and in turn, high transaction fees. Also, SWIFT is a messaging system, it does not move money, it ensures that banks can communicate in a secure and authenticated way. Banks are introducing delays, e.g. a bank may flag all payments above $10,000 and/or which goes to certain countries, and require manual verification of these before they are processed. They might even be required to do some of this due to regulation. I think it is pointless to continue this thread if this is where you’re coming from.

Classic con man. Notice how the interviewer ask a real question about how this will affect someone like J.P. Morgan, i.e. what will the “competition” (XRP/crypto) do better/faster/cheaper, that will cause J.P. Morgan to lose customers/marketshare. And then a complete non-answer, because this guy has no answer! You will find this again and again, I see above you quoted @Neeranamclaiming it takes 5 days and costs $20 to send money to Scotland. So I wonder, if I can teach him how he can send money to Scotland instantly and free of charge, does that make crypto useless? Anyway, it’s really all very simple: A system with tens of thousands of computers constantly working to validate the same transactions (giving it an extremely limited throughput) will never be cheaper or faster than a smaller network of a few trusted nodes, you shouldn’t need to be a computer science genius to understand that. As for XRP, the idea here I think is more to provide an intermediary currency (rather than provide a payment network, although I know they also have such a thing). But USD is already used to solve this problem, but I guess some people will rather trust some founder of a tech startup than the Federal Reserve.

Instead they trace you through the blockchain. If you ever interact with an exchange that does KYC (pretty much all of them these days), orders something that requires a shipping address, or sends money to someone who knows your identity, pretty much all your money is tainted and whatever you later do with this money, people can trace back the history and find out who you are. I don’t think regular people realize just how hard it is to transact completely anonymously with these tokens. Have a look at just how many clues the authorities found regarding the identity of the alleged Bitfinex hackers.

The problem here is that the banking system is fragmented, do you agree? I.e. does my small savings bank have nostro/vostro accounts with your small savings bank in another country? If not, we have to go through an intermediary, and that add delays and fees. How does blockchain solve that? By having all banks just use the blockchain, right? But then the real solution here is just to have all banks “use the same system”. This is no different than how we already solved the problem in Europe: By having all banks go via ECB. So all banks in the European Monetary Zone can do instant transfers 24/7 between each other, because they are all connected to the same system (ECB). The U.S. has been pretty slow, but I think they now have a similar system where all U.S. banks can now do instant transfers among each other. So to be clear here, blockchain is not the solution, moving everyone to the same system is the solution. People think that blockchain is a solution because “we can already do it with blockchain”, but really, we cannot, we have to go through multiple third parties and end up paying lots of fees, it is way less efficient than something like Wise or SEPA Instant Payments, and it does not connect more institutions (where you have your money) than the former. Also, you have to remember the regulatory requirements. Not just KYC/AML, but also consumer protection, e.g. when Citibank accidentally sends $500 million to the wrong account, there needs to be recourse. How?

The simplest being that we all have to pay taxes to our government, and most governments do not want to accept these in a currency controlled by an algorithm and that can be manipulated by whales and/or opaque offshore exchanges. Note though that this is not because they want to control it themselves. For example most governments in Europe have pretty much no control over how “their” currency is controlled. It is controlled by ECB which is a non-political institution with a mandate to ensure price stability.

I’m not so sure about that. Reports from people tasked with looking into this basically asks: “what problem are we trying to solve?”. The best answer I have seen is to get rid of “private money”, but it’s questionable if we actually want this. There was The Narrow Bank which was basically a proxy for depositing your money directly with The Federal Reserve (which CBDC would be), but they were not granted a banking license, exactly because credit does play an important role in society. And to quote another poster: Exactly, except, we’re not halfway there, we are there! Many countries have been there for at least a decade, in Europe I can move my money between my account with Interactive Brokers (Hungary), Wise (Belgium), and Revolut (Lithuania) instantly and free of charge (with some restrictions). I am not saying that digital money cannot be improved, but this is mostly a regulatory thing, i.e. they want to ensure the KYC/AML stuff and also consumer protection for people who spend money digitally / online. Crypto, compared to what we already have, is a giant step back, and no, it’s not because we are still early. Crypto has to solve problems that money with central authorities does not have to solve, and the price for solving them is high. If you disagree with the current policies, e.g. about requirements for accepting payments online, then yes, crypto solves a problem, but the problem here is then “how to avoid regulation”, it is not a technical problem per se.

“The eight original pilot areas include […] Chiang Mai” From 2 AM to 4 AM in Chiang Mai? Where? Pretty much everything closes at midnight. At least officially, and enforced in the tourist areas.

Other than paying the Winklevoss twins to buy and sell tokens at their exchange, what exactly are you using it for? I.e. what benefits does it give you that are only made possible by bitcoin and/or blockchain?

Most people realized it long ago, those who still think crypto has value are in a cult. Ask them to explain where the value is coming from and they can’t! But it is so obviously clear that a group of people who trade tokens among each other does not create any value what-so-ever, it’s just a zero-sum (trading) game. They try to obfuscate it by yield farming, staking, issuing new tokens, and other shenanigans, but it still just boils down to numbers in a spreadsheet, no value is being created. As for the usefulness of blockchain itself, it’s an extremely inefficient database that solves a problem that no legit business has. Anyway, this topic has been beaten to death, if you go back and look at old threads, you will find people saying they bought into all sorts of stuff that has since crashed, Celsius and Anchor have both been mentioned as “something that generates value” (which we now know for sure did not), and CryptoDotCom’s VISA card has been touted as another advantage of crypto, where you had to buy CRO tokens and lock them up for a year to get some basic advantages with your card, and that token has also collapsed in value, so most probably ended up with a net loss to get that free Spotify subscription, etc… Michael Saylor, Mark Cuban, and Kevin O'Leary have all been used to tout crypto via an appeal to authority, all these people have lost money on crypto, the latter being an investor in FTX, the former being down $1.8 bn. on his insane Bitcoin adventure. It’s unbelievable people still buy this stuff, but then so is QAnon and all that other crazy stuff people believe in, and you just can’t convince these people with rational arguments, I have tried multiple times on this forum to have an actual discussion about value creation and the technical issues with blockchain, but it generally ends with “you’re just bitter because you missed the boat” or “you’re too old to understand”…

One officer took her passport, another escorted her to an ATM inside the arrival area and gave her a cloth to wrap the money (emphasizing that this is definitely not normal). She got back her passport when she handed over the money. I fail to see how there can possibly be any reasonable explanation for this exchange of money for entry stamp other than extortion. And she was absolutely furious about this harassment. She got it down to 2,000 baht only because that would be roughly the price of a plane ticket, i.e. she was effectively told either pay them or book a plane out of Thailand, which she was willing to do if the entry fee was 10,000 baht. Some Thais in the line did ask what it was about, and the immigration police replied that it was none of their business. She came from Europe, had no visa, and passport from a southeast asian country (i.e. “poor”), but one where there is an agreement about visa exemption or visa on arrival (I forget which). Hence my comment about “white tourist” or “rich farang” or whatever you wanna call the affluent segment who are normally not subjected to this <deleted>. I must confess that this incident in Suvarnabhumi does surprise me, despite knowing how corrupt the police in Thailand is, and how often they pressure people to “settle issues on the spot” or their “we come and check your shop each month, and you pay us 6,000 baht for that”, but times are hard for people in Thailand, and that probably also goes for the (immigration) police…