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In the past month BitcoinVN-owned remittance service Cash2VN announced to remove all limits from their platform.Cash2VN is a service which allows senders to send VND to recipients in Vietnam via Cryptocurrency; among the supported Cryptocurrencies is also Bitcoin Cash.
Alex Winter is the developer behind Cash2VN. Within the Bitcoin Cash community he is known for Satoshiwall, a bitcoin paywall service leveraging BIP-70 for non-custodial payments.
BVNews: Hi Alex! Thank you for taking the time to speak with us. In the past week Cash2VN announced to remove any limitations from its service. Can you tell us more about what led to this decision which is surprising in the financial industry where regulations usually only seem to make products ever less useful for consumers?
Alex: We have taken this decision based on a thorough internal risk assessment. As long as regulations do not outright prohibit a service from being less useful than it could be and the associated risks with it can be kept in check by our proprietary fraud alert systems, we felt comfortable to move ahead with this change.
Additionally at a time where the global economy and Vietnam itself is suffering from drastic economic slowdown, making it simpler to support/fund business and individuals in Vietnam via our service might prove useful for some.
BVNews: You became a Bitcoiner in 2012; earlier than most. What fascinated you initially about Bitcoin and when did you realize this has the potential to become “a big thing”?
Alex: I remember a friend from university telling me about this new internet money in late 2012. You can store it on your phone or computer without a bank being involved whatsoever. I bought some Bitcoin from a weird Polish exchange and played around with the Blockchain.info wallet.
I really liked the concept but I didn’t expect it to catch on for various reasons. Regular people wouldn’t want to “be their own bank” and are afraid of things like private keys or addresses which are seemingly random long strings of characters.
I ran a webshop selling libertarian merchandise at that time, and I started accepting Bitcoin along with a 10% discount. I realized the nerds just need time to geek-out on it, and sooner or later those issues would be solved.
BVNews: After the 2017 Split, what led to your decision to personally spend more of your time on Bitcoin Cash compared to Bitcoin?
Alex: That’s a story that has been rehashed countless times, so I won’t go into details. It boils down to the original promise of Bitcoin as a peer to peer electronic cash system. Bitcoin Cash is Bitcoin as far as I’m concerned.
BVNews: You have been operating experience in regard to your service Cash2VN since 2015. Can you share with us some lessons learned along the way? Also what other potential service improvements are on the way?
Alex: The number one lesson is that we have a completely different user base than we initially imagined. Cash2VN was supposed to be the tool for Vietnamese living abroad to remit money back to their families. Instead it’s mostly used by western expats inside Vietnam to quickly cash out crypto to cover their living expenses.
Vietnam recently tightened its banking regulations making it difficult for foreigners on a short-term visa to open bank accounts. We are currently in the process of completely rewriting Cash2VN and will be able to offer additional ways of delivering remittances besides bank transfers.
BVNews: How positive are you about the future of Bitcoin Cash? What possibly disappointed you in the last 3 years? Any projects or developments you are especially interested in or excited about?
Alex: The permanently lingering risk of another split is certainly a concern. The BSV split was already painful enough so another split will probably be the end of all hope for a lot of members of the BCH community.
Apart from that, I think there is enough reason to remain bullish. The fundamentals look great from a technical perspective. Recently Tether launched their USDT stablecoin on the BCH’s token layer SLP, finally enabling USDT transactions for sub-cent transaction fees.
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If you are interested in more of Alex Winter, you can follow him here:
If you are interested in more advancements of Cash2VN you can follow them here:
Nice article