BuyMeACoffee silently dropped support for many countries (2024)

It's fascinating that neither the article nor the comments here include a single mention of "stablecoins" which seems like the obvious solution to this problem.

Yeah, not as easy to cash out as you make it out to be.

Still easier than cashing out from a platform that doesn't support your country at all.

That's fair, but it's probably an improvement in regions blocked by more traditional financial services. In many of those regions, people may not even want to cash out to local currencies as holding a digital dollar is often more stable.

That requires a rather unusual confluence of events.

Almost everywhere there needs to be a on AND off ramp, or only the most diehard hobbiest or desperate economic actor will consider it. This stuff is just too new, and there is too small an ecosystem for all but a small handful of coins for them to actually act as a useful exchange medium.

Genuinely curious, what alternative solutions do you see to the underlying problem highlighted in OP's post?

If BuyMeACoffee is actually just trying to comply with sanctions, that still applies even if they're facilitating payments via cryptocurrency. If the reason why they're sticking to just Stripe really is in part fraud prevention, well, I... Do I really need to comment more? I badly wish cryptocurrency was the savior for a deeply broken ecosystem of payment processors but it simply isn't, it's not easy to use, it's very easy to lose money, transactions can be slow and expensive. It could be/could have been great for the sadly growing segment of payments involving legal, consensual transactions between parties that are pushed away by traditional payment processors, but so far it isn't/hasn't been and I don't think it will be. Maybe some day.

(I do realize you are specifically speaking of stablecoins but as far as I know they struggle from all of the typical problems you'd expect, just with a less volatile value.)

not everyone knows how to send stablecoins and many creators get their donations from older people and other less crypto aware groups. Many people don't know how to send money internetionally

These are all valid points. Perhaps I'm being naive but I'm still optimistic that a lot of this can be solved downstream from regulatory clarity.

I believe OP was referring to a P2P crypto situation, rather than the BuyMeACoffee platform adopting stablecoin support.

So I'd send crypto to your address, then you'd trade it for cash with your local exchange/dealer etc.

The ones they usually use right now - holding physical USD, bartering, physical gold, real estate, etc. depending on the use case and degree of wealth.

Local currency does still get used, it’s unavoidable, and causes losses. There is no perfect solution.

One economy which fits the description is India - check out the boxes of cash hah! [https://www.livemint.com/Politics/eGzzHAcOe5VePoyCd7n0EN/Inc...], and [https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/mumbai-raid-...].

(FYI, a cr or crore == 10 million, a lakh == 100k. Even at current exchange rates, that is a lot of money anywhere, and an absolutely massive fortune in India).

But there is an element of this in ALL economies, including the US. It’s a matter of scale/ratios, not a yes/no thing.

They are in theory but in practice they have risks. Tether is probably unbacked and could be relying on BTC for collateral. You could get BTC downside with zero upside.

Just use BTC if anything.

What I find fascinating is that crypto bros keep coming back with "technically its solved by crypto" and never looking at the non-technical sides of why a business/solution exists.

- Stablecoin as an output requires BuyMeACoffe to implement KYC

- Stablecoin as input adds a lot of friction on the donor with KYC again

Crypto is just massive overhead for everyone in its current state

Yeah, but the only reason for this overhead is the Government, of course.