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No, you don't. That is the vallue today. If the price goes to 0.000001 you won't have enough to pay her an hour.
You do not have that money at this moment., Only when you sell do you have that money.

This is how many people get "rich". They think that shares they have are the money they have.
When you bought 100 Bitcoins when they where 100 USD, the moment they where 20.000, you did not have 2.000.000 USD, you had 100 Bitcoins. If you have them now, you still have no USD, you have bitcoins.

OTOH if it goes to 0.5, you do not suddenly have 50 USD, you still have 100 bitcoins.

So when you say that you have enough for a few centuries, you must add 'if the value stays the same'

And unless you are a bank, it might be better, as a company, to invest that money into the bank by paying back loans or, if having loans is financially interesting, get better loans and pay less interest.

Because a few centuries is, say, 3 centuries, times 5.000 1.5MM at least. (as 3 is the lowest when looking at several)
Having that on a USB key and not doing anything with it, is not the wisest financial decision. As this is pure profit, it is very easily to look at the ROI when looking at doing several different transactions over a period of several years and find ways to pay her in a different way.

And I am sure there are ways to do payments via a banktransfer to a bank in Pakistan.With all the monies you made, taking the cost of those transfers should be a non-issue (and those costs should have been calculated beforehand anyway)

And if you are too dumb to figure that out Her is another way

The thing is that you are a willing participant in creating black money and try to figure out a way to talk yourself out of it. You should never have gone with payment in Bitcoin in the first place.

Wow. I was curious to see if I could find a copy of this poster so did a quick search.

I couldn't find the poster searching for "western union nigeria poster", but this link - titled "Send money to Nigeria" - is totally lacking any kind of warning. Maybe Nigerian spam has petered out a bit recently but it still seems like there should be at least a warning in the footnotes!

Not true. Last (and only) time I used it, I was required to provide an ID. And so was the recipient of the transfer. The password was an extra security.

The option used to be available, and probably security was tightened in response to exactly these kinds of frauds. In any case, this fraud is sufficiently real that Western Union themselves warn about it.

A friend of mine works at a place that handles WU money orders. The various cash limit (for picking up without ID, maximum allowed withdrawal, etc.) depends on a number of things and tend to vary depending on which WU franchise you're at. This specific chain of locations does allow pickups without an ID, instead you need the sending party to provide you with merely the transaction ID and the Test Question which will net you a WU Check for the transfer amount. The friend in question recalls providing at least one check in this faction for $5k. The location in question will even cash such checks without ID if they are $500 or less for the typically exorbitant cash-checking fee.

Do you know that Western Union doesn't require you to legitimate yourself when withdrawing money if it's not more than (IIRC) 6k bucks?

Even in the financial services industry, there's disagreement over what a "bank" is. Consider

• PayPal. Probably ought to be regulated as a bank, but is not.
• Western Union, a regulated money transfer service.
• ETrade Etrade is a brokerage house, but owns a bank on the side. Both operate under the "etrade.com" domain.
• Bank of America is a major bank which owns a brokerage house on the side, the reverse of ETrade.
• L. F Rothschild. Once one of the old-line banking houses of Europe, after about three mergers and breakups, they do offer financial services to the public, but they're not regulated as a bank.
• UBS Financial Services. In the US, they're a brokerage house, but in Switzerland, they're the Union Bank of Switzerland.
• Provident Credit Union A credit union performs the basic functions of a bank; it takes deposits and makes loans. But it's not a bank.
• Provident Funding, which sells mortgages, but doesn't take deposits. They're the tenth biggest lender in the US, but not a bank.
• Mellon Financial Corporation. They own banks, but are not, themselves, a bank.
• Stanbic Bank of Nigeria Are they real?

OK, who gets to be in ".bank"?

Any (legal) cash transaction more than $10,000 triggers government reporting regulations

That information is out of date - it has been $3k for some years now - that action was taken as part of the so-called "war on drugs" - I am not completely certain it was not lowered again from $3k [according to the Moneygram website referenced below, it has been lowered to $2k under the so-called USA PATRIOT Act].

If you don't believe it (can't imagine why, but .... ;)), the proof is simple - go to Walmart [Moneygram] or Western Union and try to send $5000 in cash to your friend in another state - if you want to make it really interesting, try to do it using the "no ID required for pickup" option.

It's interesting, sometimes, the kinds of fantasitic beliefs some of the people who expect you to trust them with your money seem to hold...

In any case, transacting even in cash leaves a lot more traces these days than it did when the blurb you posted was written... Ever read " Steal This Book "? [i don't know if it is still available uneditted, but it was - at least at one time - a really great read...

From the MoneyGram website:

You must file this SAR-MSB report whenever one or more transactions that add up to $2,000 or more are conducted or attempted at your location involving one of our products and you know or suspect that the transaction: [...] or [...] has no business or apparent lawful purpose and you know of no reasonable explanation for the transaction.

Now, in the real world - the world we lived in up until recently - You're not supposed to have to tell a desk clerk at Walmart why you're sending your associate in California $5k in cash.

Note that MoneyGram - while cheaper than WU - does not do anonymous transfers at all. For that matter, I don't know for sure that WU still allows anonymous money transfer like they did in the days I didn't carry ID and my mom had to send me gas money from out of state - can't get to their Javascript-only website just now]. But the fact remains: I can't think of any good reason I should be required to explain my business to a telex clerk, for any reason, ever - I'm paying for a service, not begging a favour.

More from the same page:

the Currency Transaction Report (CTR) and the recordkeeping and identification requirements that apply to cash purchases of money orders of $3,000 to $10,000, and the recordkeeping requirements that apply to any money transfer of $3,000 or more.

Just like voice and proximity have something over email, there's a kind of concretion in the physical missal.

But it can be done.

Believe it or not, Western Union.com. Mind you, it costs fifteen bucks. But it definitely makes an impact.

You can still place telegrams. Western Union still delivers. They use Airborne personel to do the deliveries, and it takes one business day.

You're taking it as a given that the functions of a bank are obvious, and that any institution that replicates these functions is also a bank. But lots of non-banks do bank-like things. Mortgage brokers, insurance companies, pawn brokers, assurance bond companies, wire service companies, re-insurance pools... The differences are obscure, but they are recognized by law.

If you compare PayPal with all the different pre-Internet financial institutions, the closest analogy would seem to be wire services, like Western Union. These don't actually do anything that banks don't do (though they do handle small transfers more cheaply and conveniently than banks). But they are not considered banks.

Here's one important difference between Western Union and PayPal. To do business with Western Union, all you need is a pile of cash and someone to send it to. But there aren't any PayPal offices where you can send or receive payments. In order to do business with PayPal, both sender and recipient must have an existing bank account! I suspect that requirement separates PayPal even further from banks in the eyes of the FDIC.

Hmm, I'm definitely not an expert. But from their About Page

Western Union is a global leader in money transfer and message services, with a history of pioneering service dating back more than 150 years.
With about 1,800 employees and $2 billion in revenue, Western Union remains an industry leader with an eye toward providing fast and reliable money and messaging services.
Western Union Financial Services, Inc. is a subsidiary of First Data Corp. (NYSE: FDC).

Sounds like they're definitely an escrow service only, as you cannot keep an account there full of money for several months at a time, or indefinitely (like PayPal).

Western Union offers Mastercard, but they are not the *BANK* that *ISSUES* the credit card. The *BANK* is "Direct Merchants Bank, N.A., Arizona" Any organization can have credit cards issued, but they have to get a bank to back them..

Western Union Mastercard has the details.

The VISA site explains how to get your company name on a VISA card.. How'd you like a VISA with "Joe's Bar" emblazen across the front.. :)

VISA CoBranding

Here in America, we've grown used to thinking that anyone who acts like a bank is a bank. That's mostly because the feds kick around anyone who tries to be a bank and isn't. I strongly suspect that the feds aren't just letting PayPal go. They have something bigger on them.

A large number of people here have complained about how PayPal refuses to handle complaints about merchandise either not being sent or arriving in poor condition. While PayPal politely handles some of these cases, they are no means obligated by their terms to handle them all.

The fact of the matter is that PayPal is a money transfer agent. They are the electronic version of Western Union. Money transfer agents basically take money from one person, charge a fee, and then give the remainder to another. While they may have some fraud guarantees, they do not normally handle merchandise disputes. They just move money from one place to another, and then their job is done.

What people here seem to consider PayPal to be is an escrow service. An escrow service takes money from person A plus a fee, and then notifies person B that the escrow service has money from person A meant for them. Person B then sends the merchandise, which Person A inspects. If Person A is not satisfied, they send the merchandise back to Person B. Otherwise (ideally), Person B gets paid.

Escrow services endure a lot more risk than a money transfer agent does. They deal with a higher risk of fraud, and take more measures to compensate for this. PayPal does not consider themselves to be an escrow service. PayPal's own FAQ says so.

Examples of *real* online escrow services include Escrow.com and Tradenable. Note that I have not used either of these, so buyer/seller beware.

On the positive side, it's just $9.95 (for 1000 characters), is delivered to your recipient's address rather than just showing up in that day's mail, and you can send it over the net. However, telegrams of today are not what they were in the fifties. Apparently, Western Union just prints your message out on telegram stationery and sends it next-day on Airborne Express. And if you're sending it to a congressperson, they may regularly get several telegrams a day anyhow.

I've never sent or received a telegram -- this is all gleaned from Western Union's site. But that's the thing, although just about everyone knows what a telegram is, they're quite rare in this country these days (even in Washington, D.C. when compared to a generation or two ago). They used to be common before affordable long-distance calling, but now they're a surprising curiosity. Most people in the US under the age of forty or fifty have probably never gotten a telegram in their life. So this looks like a possible way to register your opinion with some impact without ever having to leave your computer.

Anyone have experience sending or getting telegrams with WU's current system?

The SP had quite a few different divisions, including shipping, communications, et cetera.
Which finally brought us to the...
Southern Pacific Railroad Internal Network Telecommunications
...one of the biggest three telcos in the entire world.

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