# Twitter Thread on Western Union --- Decent piece on Western Union that provides a more nuanced view than you typically see on Twitter https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-06-16/for-western-union-refugees-and-immigrants-are-the-ultimate-market Here's some things I learned: --- Western Union operates in literally every country except Iran and North Korea, including sanctioned countries (e.g. Sudan and Syria) which traditional financial services view as too risky. It's slow and expensive, but provides a critical lifeline when nothing else is available --- The article cites an average commission of 7.5%, which is impressive when you consider that every transaction involves 4-7 actors who must all be incentivized to support the transaction. Maybe 7.5% is close to a "natural" minimum cost of sending money in a human-based system --- Western Union's primary customer base is immigrants. So they lobby on immigration issues and fund pro-immigration research. Seems like a pretty good thing to have an international corporation willing to stand up for the small guys --- Western Union's competitive advantage is their worldwide network of on-the-ground agents. This article cites an avg customer acquisition cost of $75-125 - way too much for Bitcoin-based remittance company Abra to handle. Abra has since given up and pivoted to a different product. ![[Screen Shot 2021-12-02 at 9.23.06 PM.png]] --- Western Union is old and stodgy but it would be naive to dismiss their 170 years of experience as worthless. It is certainly a 'highly evolved traditional institution', which @NickSzabo4 suggests we should try to reverse engineer rather than rebuild from scratch. ![[Screen Shot 2021-12-02 at 9.28.12 PM.png]] --- (Above quote taken from this blog post) https://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2017/02/money-blockchains-and-social-scalability.html --- Western Union is old and stodgy but it would be naive to dismiss their 170 years of experience as worthless. It is certainly a 'highly evolved traditional institution', which @NickSzabo4 suggests we should consider reverse engineering rather than rebuilding from scratch. --- To conclude, Western Union has had a fair share of scandals, having facilitated money transfers for drug cartels, terrorists, illegal immigration, frauds, and scams. But the company is far from axiomatically evil. Best of luck to @ln_strike on tackling this difficult problem!