Crypto remittances see adoption, but volatility may be a deal breaker
The path to mass cryptocurrency adoption passes through remittances, but it may not happen any time soon.
Cryptocurrency adoption has been growing for a number of reasons. In emerging markets, research suggests crypto remittances are..
The path to mass cryptocurrency adoption passes through remittances, but it may not happen any time soon.
Cryptocurrency adoption has been growing for a number of reasons. In emerging markets, research suggests crypto remittances are a factor, although some argue that the idea of using cryptocurrencies for these transactions is nothing more than a purist’s dream.
The CEO of cryptocurrency derivatives trading platform BitMEX, Alexander Höptner, predicted earlier this month that by the end of next year, at least five countries will have accepted Bitcoin (BTC) as a legal tender, as crypto assets can be faster and cheaper for remittances.
He believes that all five will be developing countries and that they would adopt cryptocurrencies because of the growing need for cheaper and faster cross-border transactions, increasing inflation and growing political issues.
Various other commentators have suggested that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are a solution to the high costs associated with remittance payments, as a cryptocurrency transaction can be much cheaper than a remittance payment while settling in a shorter amount of time.
El Salvador was the first country in the world to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender with the country’sBitcoin Law officially coming into effect on September 7. The government launched a cryptocurrency wallet called Chivo that uses the Lightning Network, a layer-two scaling solution, to transact. The country has also purchased 700 BTC over time.
Global remittances reached over $689 billion in 2018, and commissions were so high a $49 billion industry grew around them. To crypto proponents, El Salvador is a perfect example of how cryptocurrencies can positively change the world, but to others, volatility and a general lack of trust in the market make cryptocurrency adoption impractical and unadvisable.
Are cryptocurrencies banking the unbanked?
With the Chivo wallet, Bitcoin could effectively help offer financial services to El Salvador’s un- and underbanked population. The country’s president Nayib Bukele revealed in September 2021 that 2.1 million Salvadorans are actively using the wallet, despite the pushback against the new law that saw protests even burn a Bitcoin ATM machine.
2.1 million Salvadorans are ACTIVELY USING @chivowallet (not downloads).
Chivo is not a bank, but in less than 3 weeks, it now has more users than any bank in El Salvador and is moving fast to have more users that ALL BANKS IN EL SALVADOR combined.
Per his words, Chivo isn’t a bank, but in three weeks gained more users than any bank in the country. That adoption may, however, be related to a $30 in BTC airdrop El Salvador sent to every adult citizen with the government’s wallet app.
Speaking to Cointelegraph, Eric Berman, senior legal editor of U.S. finance at Thomson Reuters Practical Law, said remittances using cryptocurrencies are a “purist’s pipe dream.” While Höptner pointed out that remittances made up 23% of El Salvador’s gross domestic product in 2020, Berman countered that only a fraction of the nation’s businesses has taken a Bitcoin payment and that the government’s cryptocurrency app has been plagued by technical issues.
Berman further added that “most of El Salvador’s $6 billion in annual remittances still comes via money transfers,” as many are wary of the cryptocurrency’s volatility. Because of the volatility’s impracticality, he said, Bitcoin hasn’t been widely adopted as a payment method among merchants, adding:
“This impracticability is magnified exponentially for the disenfranchised and unbanked. No one wants to send mom $100 only to have it be worth $80 by the time it gets to her.”
Berman added that “rather than the populist uprising that BTC purists have been touting for years,” Bitcoin’s adoption has instead been growing thanks to “some perhaps long overdue happy noises from U.S. and global regulators.”
Bitcoin’s growing adoption and price, Berman suggested, are the result of “institutional enthusiasm that is quite the antithesis of the grassroots movement for the disenfranchised and unbanked that spawned BTC over a decade ago.”
Oleksandr Lutskevych, the founder and CEO of cryptocurrency exchange CEX.IO, seemingly disagrees with Berman’s assessment, saying El Salvador’s adoption highlights Bitcoin as “replacing the traditional, centralized rails used for remittances.”
To Lutskevych, Bitcoin’s infrastructure is being adopted to also promote the transfer of stablecoins on top of its network, ensuring the cryptocurrency’s volatility won’t affect remittances. El Salvador’s move, he said, promotes financial inclusion by helping cut down remittance costs.
Adoption out of “pure necessity”
In emerging markets, crypto proponents suggest adoption may be a result of “pure necessity,” as the transaction fees paid on most blockchain networks dwarf the fees paid to some remittance vendors.
According to Lutskevych, it’s “abundantly clear in the rationale behind Bukele’s campaign that made BTC legal tender” that the nature of the move was to drive BTC adoption forward through remittances. Lutskevych went on to add further:
“One of the primary reasons why the country passed such legislation was to lower remittance costs, promote financial inclusion and boost GDP by leveraging BTC and its transfer infrastructure to promote financial inclusion.”
Per his words, the adoption of new technology is often the result of “pure necessity,” and that may be the case with Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in developing nations whose populations are heavily affected by remittance costs, which according to Markus Franke, a partner at cross-border crypto payments firm Celo Labs, averages 6.38% and can often go over 10% of the amount being sent.
Driving his point forward, Lutskevych added that the Chainalysis Global Crypto Adoption Index for 2021 shows that out of the top 20 countries by cryptocurrency adoption, two-thirds are “developing countries with a high percentage of GDP coming from remittances.”
He added that developing countries are now recognizing the value of “BTC’s scalable transfer infrastructure, combined with Bitcoin’s sound money properties and decentralization.”
Lutskevych also noted that Bitcoin’s Lightning Network capacity is up over 25% since El Salvador’s Bitcoin Law came into effect, while the number of payment channels routing payments on the network also moved up significantly and began a “parabolic trend right around the time of the law becoming effective.”
To him, growing peer-to-peer (P2P) trading volumes in countries like Nigeria suggest cryptocurrencies like BTC are playing a role in “getting foreign money into the country.”
Franke added to the line of thought, saying cryptocurrencies can be programmed, allowing for more complex financial operations without third parties. These features, Franke said, have seen remittance giants take an interest in cryptocurrencies.
As an example, he pointed to MoneyGram launching USDC settlement using the Stellar blockchain, and added that the Asian Development Bank has revealed services like Ripple, Mobile Money and bKash helped “deliver faster settlement, greater operational efficiencies and more competitive foreign exchange rates during the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Amr Shady, CEO of business-to-business payment and financing platform Tribal Credit, told Cointelegraph that Mexico could be another example of a country adopting cryptocurrencies for remittances, as estimates have shown they could reduce costs by 50% to 90%.
It all comes down to numbers
If, indeed, five countries do adopt Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency as legal tender, adoption seems likely going to keep on growing. Emerging markets rely on remittances and the use of stablecoins appears to be a viable solution to the volatility of crypto assets like BTC.
Projects like Facebook’s Novi are already using stablecoins to facilitate cross-border transactions, with the project’s marketing efforts having a heavy focus on remittances. Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) may offer similar cheap transactions that will help users move money across borders at a low cost.
The problem with these two solutions is the central entities behind them who can easily start discriminating, and for example, geoblock users. Decentralized blockchains are working on scaling to accommodate thousands of transactions per second, bringing down remittance costs. Add in stablecoins, and the only thing blocking mass crypto adoption could very well be the specific knowledge needed to navigate different blockchains and understand how addresses work.
User-experience improvements have for long been moving addresses and blockchain navigation to the back while helping users focus on payments. Once the use of blockchain technology happens behind the scenes at a low cost, remittances will inevitably turn to crypto. Yet, those transactions may be years away.
Former Project Veritas & O’Keefe Media Group operative and Pfizer formulation analyst scientist Justin Leslie revealed previously unpublished recordings showing Pfizer’s top vaccine researchers discussing major concerns surrounding COVID-19 vaccines. Leslie delivered these recordings to Veritas in late 2021, but they were never published:
Principal scientist at Pfizer, Kanwall Gill in 2021:
“We had no idea how it’s going to look like. MRNA vaccines have been there for 50 years, but nothing went to clinical trial because MRNA have been known to have side effects.”
Featured in Leslie’s footage is Kanwal Gill, a principal scientist at Pfizer. Gill was weary of MRNA technology given its long research history yet lack of approved commercial products. She called the vaccines “sneaky,” suggesting latent side effects could emerge in time.
Gill goes on to illustrate how the vaccine formulation process was dramatically rushed under the FDA’s Emergency Use Authorization and adds that profit incentives likely played a role:
Pfizer's principal scientist in 2021:
“It takes 10 year for a vaccine to come out. It takes years of observations... we are doing everything at the same time."
"It’s going to affect my heart, and I’m going to die. And nobody’s talking about that."
Leslie recorded another colleague, Pfizer’s pharmaceutical formulation scientist Ramin Darvari, who raised the since-validated concern that repeat booster intake could damage the cardiovascular system:
Pfizer's pharmaceutical formulation scientist, Ramin Darvari, in 2021:
“They’re engineering it specifically for me to take the next one, so increasing my consumption."
“It’s going to affect my heart, and I’m going to die. And nobody’s talking about that.”
None of these claims will be shocking to hear in 2024, but it is telling that high-level Pfizer researchers were discussing these topics in private while the company assured the public of “no serious safety concerns” upon the jab’s release:
Vaccine for Children is a Different Formulation
Leslie sent me a little-known FDA-Pfizer conference — a 7-hour Zoom meeting published in tandem with the approval of the vaccine for 5 – 11 year-olds — during which Pfizer’s vice presidents of vaccine research and development, Nicholas Warne and William Gruber, discussed a last-minute change to the vaccine’s “buffer” — from “PBS” to “Tris” — to improve its shelf life. For about 30 seconds of these 7 hours, Gruber acknowledged that the new formula was NOT the one used in clinical trials (emphasis mine):
“The studies were done using the same volume… but contained the PBS buffer. We obviously had extensive consultations with the FDA and it was determined that the clinical studies were not required because, again, the LNP and the MRNA are the same and the behavior — in terms of reactogenicity and efficacy — are expected to be the same.”
According to Leslie, the tweaked “buffer” dramatically changed the temperature needed for storage: “Before they changed this last step of the formulation, the formula was to be kept at -80 degrees Celsius. After they changed the last step, we kept them at 2 to 8 degrees celsius,” Leslie told me.
The claims are backed up in the referenced video presentation:
I’m no vaccinologist but an 80-degree temperature delta — and a 5x shelf-life in a warmer climate — seems like a significant change that might warrant clinical trials before commercial release.
Despite this information technically being public, there has been virtually no media scrutiny or even coverage — and in fact, most were told the vaccine for children was the same formula but just a smaller dose — which is perhaps due to a combination of the information being buried within a 7-hour jargon-filled presentation and our media being totally dysfunctional.
Bohemian Grove?
Leslie’s 2-hour long documentary on his experience at both Pfizer and O’Keefe’s companies concludes on an interesting note: James O’Keefe attended an outing at the Bohemian Grove.
Leslie offers this photo of James’ Bohemian Grove “GATE” slip as evidence, left on his work desk atop a copy of his book, “American Muckraker”:
My thoughts on the Bohemian Grove: my good friend’s dad was its general manager for several decades. From what I have gathered through that connection, the Bohemian Grove is not some version of the Illuminati, at least not in the institutional sense.
Do powerful elites hangout there? Absolutely. Do they discuss their plans for the world while hanging out there? I’m sure it has happened. Do they have a weird ritual with a giant owl? Yep, Alex Jones showed that to the world.
My perspective is based on conversations with my friend and my belief that his father is not lying to him. I could be wrong and am open to evidence — like if boxer Ryan Garcia decides to produce evidence regarding his rape claims — and I do find it a bit strange the club would invite O’Keefe who is notorious for covertly filming, but Occam’s razor would lead me to believe the club is — as it was under my friend’s dad — run by boomer conservatives the extent of whose politics include disliking wokeness, immigration, and Biden (common subjects of O’Keefe’s work).
Therefore, I don’t find O’Keefe’s visit to the club indicative that he is some sort of Operation Mockingbird asset as Leslie tries to depict (however Mockingbird is a 100% legitimate conspiracy). I have also met James several times and even came close to joining OMG. While I disagreed with James on the significance of many of his stories — finding some to be overhyped and showy — I never doubted his conviction in them.
As for why Leslie’s story was squashed… all my sources told me it was to avoid jail time for Veritas executives.
Feel free to watch Leslie’s full documentary here and decide for yourself.
Fun fact — Justin Leslie was also the operative behind this mega-viral Project Veritas story where Pfizer’s director of R&D claimed the company was privately mutating COVID-19 behind closed doors:
BREAKING: @Pfizer Exploring "Mutating" COVID-19 Virus For New Vaccines
"Don't tell anyone this...There is a risk...have to be very controlled to make sure this virus you mutate doesn't create something...the way that the virus started in Wuhan, to be honest."#DirectedEvolutionpic.twitter.com/xaRvlD5qTo
“[…] our findings support the hypothesis that the intrauterine environment, particularly essential and non-essential metals, affect epigenetic aging biomarkers across the life course.”
Credit: 2024 Bozack et al.
“[…] our findings support the hypothesis that the intrauterine environment, particularly essential and non-essential metals, affect epigenetic aging biomarkers across the life course.”
BUFFALO, NY- March 12, 2024 – A new research paper was published inAging (listed by MEDLINE/PubMed as “Aging (Albany NY)” and “Aging-US” by Web of Science) Volume 16, Issue 4, entitled, “Associations of prenatal one-carbon metabolism nutrients and metals with epigenetic aging biomarkers at birth and in childhood in a US cohort.”
Epigenetic gestational age acceleration (EGAA) at birth and epigenetic age acceleration (EAA) in childhood may be biomarkers of the intrauterine environment. In this new study, researchers Anne K. Bozack, Sheryl L. Rifas-Shiman, Andrea A. Baccarelli, Robert O. Wright, Diane R. Gold, Emily Oken, Marie-France Hivert, and Andres Cardenas from Stanford University School of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Columbia University, and Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai investigated the extent to which first-trimester folate, B12, 5 essential and 7 non-essential metals in maternal circulation are associated with EGAA and EAA in early life.
“[…] we hypothesized that OCM [one-carbon metabolism] nutrients and essential metals would be positively associated with EGAA and non-essential metals would be negatively associated with EGAA. We also investigated nonlinear associations and associations with mixtures of micronutrients and metals.”
Bohlin EGAA and Horvath pan-tissue and skin and blood EAA were calculated using DNA methylation measured in cord blood (N=351) and mid-childhood blood (N=326; median age = 7.7 years) in the Project Viva pre-birth cohort. A one standard deviation increase in individual essential metals (copper, manganese, and zinc) was associated with 0.94-1.2 weeks lower Horvath EAA at birth, and patterns of exposures identified by exploratory factor analysis suggested that a common source of essential metals was associated with Horvath EAA. The researchers also observed evidence of nonlinear associations of zinc with Bohlin EGAA, magnesium and lead with Horvath EAA, and cesium with skin and blood EAA at birth. Overall, associations at birth did not persist in mid-childhood; however, arsenic was associated with greater EAA at birth and in childhood.
“Prenatal metals, including essential metals and arsenic, are associated with epigenetic aging in early life, which might be associated with future health.”
Read the full paper: DOI:https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.205602
Corresponding Author: Andres Cardenas
Corresponding Email:andres.cardenas@stanford.edu
Keywords: epigenetic age acceleration, metals, folate, B12, prenatal exposures
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About Aging:
Launched in 2009, Aging publishes papers of general interest and biological significance in all fields of aging research and age-related diseases, including cancer—and now, with a special focus on COVID-19 vulnerability as an age-dependent syndrome. Topics in Aging go beyond traditional gerontology, including, but not limited to, cellular and molecular biology, human age-related diseases, pathology in model organisms, signal transduction pathways (e.g., p53, sirtuins, and PI-3K/AKT/mTOR, among others), and approaches to modulating these signaling pathways.
Please visit our website at www.Aging-US.com and connect with us:
National insurance, income tax, VAT, capital gains tax, inheritance tax… it’s easy to get confused about the many different ways we contribute to the cost of running the country. The budget announcement is the key time each year when the government shares its financial plans with us all, and announces changes that may make a tangible difference to what you pay.
But you’ll likely be hearing a lot more about taxes in the coming months – promises to cut or raise them are an easy win (or lose) for politicians in an election year. We may even get at least one “mini-budget”.
If you’ve recently entered the workforce or the housing market, you may still be wrapping your mind around all of these terms. Here is what you need to know about the different types of taxes and how they affect you.
The UK broadly uses three ways to collect tax:
1. When you earn money
If you are an employee or own a business, taxes are deducted from your salary or profits you make. For most people, this happens in two ways: income tax, and national insurance contributions (or NICs).
If you are self-employed, you will have to pay your taxes via an annual tax return assessment. You might also have to pay taxes this way for interest you earn on savings, dividends (distribution of profits from a company or shares you own) received and most other forms of income not taxed before you get it.
VAT and excise duties are taxes on most goods and services you buy, with some exceptions like books and children’s clothing. About 20% of the total tax collected is VAT.
3. Taxes on wealth and assets
These are mainly taxes on the money you earn if you sell assets (like property or stocks) for more than you bought them for, or when you pass on assets in an inheritance. In the latter case in the UK, the recipient doesn’t pay this, it is the estate paying it out that must cover this if due. These taxes contribute only about 3% to the total tax collected.
You also likely have to pay council tax, which is set by the council you live in based on the value of your house or flat. It is paid by the user of the property, no matter if you own or rent. If you are a full-time student or on some apprenticeship schemes, you may get a deduction or not have to pay council tax at all.
This article is part of Quarter Life, a series about issues affecting those of us in our 20s and 30s. From the challenges of beginning a career and taking care of our mental health, to the excitement of starting a family, adopting a pet or just making friends as an adult. The articles in this series explore the questions and bring answers as we navigate this turbulent period of life.
Put together, these totalled almost £790 billion in 2022-23, which the government spends on public services such as the NHS, schools and social care. The government collects taxes from all sources and sets its spending plans accordingly, borrowing to make up any difference between the two.
Income tax
The amount of income tax you pay is determined by where your income sits in a series of “bands” set by the government. Almost everyone is entitled to a “personal allowance”, currently £12,570, which you can earn without needing to pay any income tax.
You then pay 20% in tax on each pound of income you earn (across all sources) from £12,570-£50,270. You pay 40% on each extra pound up to £125,140 and 45% over this. If you earn more than £100,000, the personal allowance (amount of untaxed income) starts to decrease.
If you are self-employed, the same rates apply to you. You just don’t have an employer to take this off your salary each month. Instead, you have to make sure you have enough money at the end of the year to pay this directly to the government.
The government can increase the threshold limits to adjust for inflation. This tries to ensure any wage rise you get in response to higher prices doesn’t lead to you having to pay a higher tax rate. However, the government announced in 2021 that they would freeze these thresholds until 2026 (extended now to 2028), arguing that it would help repay the costs of the pandemic.
Given wages are now rising for many to help with the cost of living crisis, this means many people will pay more income tax this coming year than they did before. This is sometimes referred to as “fiscal drag” – where lower earners are “dragged” into paying higher tax rates, or being taxed on more of their income.
National insurance
National insurance contributions (NICs) are a second “tax” you pay on your income – or to be precise, on your earned income (your salary). You don’t pay this on some forms of income, including savings or dividends, and you also don’t pay it once you reach state retirement age (currently 66).
While Jeremy Hunt, the current chancellor of the exchequer, didn’t adjust income tax meaningfully in this year’s budget, he did announce a cut to NICs. This was a surprise to many, as we had already seen rates fall from 12% to 10% on incomes higher than £242/week in January. It will now fall again to 8% from April.
While this is charged separately to income tax, in reality it all just goes into one pot with other taxes. Some, including the chancellor, say it is time to merge these two deductions and make this simpler for everyone. In his budget speech this year, Hunt said he’d like to see this tax go entirely. He thinks this isn’t fair on those who have to pay it, as it is only charged on some forms of income and on some workers.
I wouldn’t hold my breath for this to happen however, and even if it did, there are huge sums linked to NICs (nearly £180bn last year) so it would almost certainly have to be collected from elsewhere (such as via an increase in income taxes, or a lot more borrowing) to make sure the government could still balance its books.
There are likely to be further tweaks to the UK’s tax system soon, perhaps by the current government before the election – and almost certainly if there is a change of government.
Wealth taxes may be in line for a change. In the budget, the chancellor reduced capital gains taxes on sales of assets such as second properties (from 28% to 24%). These types of taxes provide only a limited amount of money to the government, as quite high thresholds apply for inheritance tax (up to £1 million if you are passing on a family home).
There are calls from many quarters though to look again at these types of taxes. Wealth inequality (the differences between total wealth held by the richest compared to the poorest) in the UK is very high (much higher than income inequality) and rising.
But how to do this effectively is a matter of much debate. A recent study suggested a one-off tax on total wealth held over a certain threshold might work. But wealth taxes are challenging to make work in practice, and both main political parties have already said this isn’t an option they are considering currently.
Andy Lymer and his colleagues at the Centre for Personal Financial Wellbeing at Aston University currently or have recently received funding for their research work from a variety of funding bodies including the UK's Money and Pension Service, the Aviva Foundation, Fair4All Finance, NEST Insight, the Gambling Commission, Vivid Housing and the ESRC, amongst others.
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