Cubans Can Now Pay Their Electric Bill Using HBD

in #hive-1679222 years ago

Things are starting to move rapidly.

Over the last few months, in our coverage of the Hive Backed Dollar (HBD), we put a lot of attention on countries like Cuba, Venezuela, and Nigeria. This was done simply because there is a need that HBD can fill.

To start, these areas are economically suffering. This means tapping into a larger, global economy is of great benefit. Through the different offerings on Hive, they can get rewarded for their online activity.

The other feature is that access to the USD as a unit of account is vital. This is a currency all the merchants in the country want. Yet, to utilize that, banknotes are required. As we stated, this is dangerous and difficult. The currency is not widely distributed by the banks and personal safety is an issue.

Enter HBD.

This is a digital medium of exchange that is tied to the USD in terms of unit of account. It is not backed by USD but, rather, $HIVE so no dollars are required. It is an ideal solution to a complex problem.

Now we have another step forward.

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Real World Payments

Payments is one of the factors in building value to a currency. It is not the one of most impact yet it is what people understand. We also can see how easily this can be implemented.

We covered how there are now 13 businesses in Sucre, Venezuela that are accepting the Hive coins as payment for their goods and services. This is a situation we will continue to monitor. It is exciting to watch what is developing in that region.

Now we have another real world use case, paying for electricity in Cuba.

As we can see this is not the electric company accepting HBD as payment. Instead, we are dealing with an application that provides a service to perform such a feat.

This is an example of the innovation and creativity that arises when you give people tools to build upon.

By going through this application, payments can be made using HBD. Obviously, the utility will want payment in the Cuban Peso, or CUP. Nevertheless, the population can get the money through their activities on Hive.

Obviously, for the Cubans who are on Hive, when asked what can do you with the currency, answering "pay the electric bill" is a powerful response.

Hopefully we will hear more about this initiative. This tweet only came to my attention yesterday.

Nevertheless, it does show how we are moving forward in this area.

Hive Going Small

We tend to discuss the big stuff. For example, there was an article yesterday discussing the idea of Binance replacing BUSD with HBD. We often see the conversation turning to getting on exchanges like Coinbase. It is always the large moves that capture people's imagination.

Yet, it would be great it Amazon accepted HBD as payment. However, that is not likely to happen.

That said, what is equally as exciting is having a dozen businesses accepting HBD for payments in 250 areas around the world. Instead of catering to the behemoths, Hive can truly focus upon decentralization by spreading globally.

Without knowing the details, this application is somehow operating as a mini-exchange. It is swapping HBD for CUP. While this is not going to rival Binance, and isn't an exchange in the traditional sense, it does get Cubans from HBD to CUP, even if only to pay a bill.

Again, what if we had 100 of these in operation? Collectively, that might rival a small exchange while also provided resiliency since it is not just one entity. The last 18 months taught us how important this is.

We Do It Ourselves

A couple of weeks ago I wrote this article:

To me, this captured the approach that we take with Hive. We are not likely to get a Coinbase or Binance at this time. However, we see applications such as the one cited here popping up all over the place. Hive is for builders and that is something we see on a regular basis.

HBD is something to be very optimistic about. That said, we have to be clear, nobody is going to accept it on a mass scale. That means integration to large platforms is not coming, at least for the foreseeable future.

That is why we say F*ck It, We Do It Ourselves. It is up to us to build the applications that utilize HBD. This places our medium of exchange coin front and center with all that we are doing. Our community is relatively small but services such as paying an electric bill with money earned online is certainly going to garner a bit of attention.

Here is where we can see our numbers growing.

We often post how "Hive is changing lives". This is another example. Providing the money to pay for a basic necessity like electricity is a baseline move. It is where we see Hive inserting itself at the foundation of people's lives.

Do you think someone who is active on Hive earning enough HBD to pay the electric bill is going to stop participating?

Not likely.

And as we are seeing, the number of ways to be rewarded is only growing on a weekly basis as shown by the GOSH project.

Hive doesn't excel at hype. What it does offer is a lot of building and putting a foundation in place.

This is just another example of that.


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Haha yes! Big win!

Que buena noticia,esto incrementará la utilidad de la comunidad Hive.

That is very interesting. I wonder how much HBD it takes to pay the average electric bill in Cuba. I am assuming the service charges some kind of fee. It's probably still worth it to them. That is awesome that HBD is low key expanding like that.

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Hello! In my house, with two air conditioners (which we only use in the evenings), a TV, a computer, a refrigerator and some electrical equipment in the kitchen... I am paying about $800 CUP (about 5 HBD today).

And yes, we do charge a small service fee. But the payment of services such as electricity, mobile and internet balance have a favored rate in the app since the government gives me a 10% discount when paying electronically. So I can offer Cuban Hivers a better rate on certain services.

Very cool! My bill is right around the same amount. 150 HBD per month.

Is that 5 HBD a day?

I have no idea what the avg electric bill is in Cuba so I have no clue.

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Like Feberge

They'll tell two friends
tell two friends.gif

very useful if hive can pay for electricity or credit, especially if you add a market that sells clothes or electronics

I dont know what other options there are with the app.

Perhaps someone can do a review of it.

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This is truly amazing! I hope that Hive payments will soon be more mainstream here in my country as well, that'd be a major shift for me and everyone else who uses the platform from here. I'll keep an eye for these developments too!

What is your country?

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Venezuela, but I live in Caracas. As far as I'm aware there are no businesses here yet that use Hive. I hope that changes soon!

When you go shopping, ask them if they will take HIVE or HBD. They'll probably say no. But if one person a day asks them, they will start to think about it. It's about letting them know there is a way to get an edge, and that HBD is probably a more stable currency than the Bolivar.

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Thanks, I'll keep that in mind!

Interesting development, adoption comes in weird places, haha.

Yet, it would be great it Amazon accepted HBD as payment. However, that is not likely to happen.

Yeah, Amazon is endorsing AVAX yet you still can't use it as a payment option.

Once people will begin accepting cryto for utilities or morgage payments, suddenly people will begin to take it more seriously.

Wow que genial poder ver cómo se amplian los productos y servicios que pueden ser pagados con hbd.

Apparently my power company doesn't have that payment feature yet, not that I would spend any precious HBD for it. The Cubans are thinking ahead of the curve, I love it.

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Today again you right about HBD, you don't think there are many other topics to discuss 😂

Well it is about Hive because you can use it as payment also but it makes no sense to pay your electric with a coin that could 4x.

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Pretty freaking cool. It is always about use case and if someone can pay their utility bill with HBD proceeds that fits the bill.

Yes, there were two puns in there.

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Very creative.

You should be part of #bcpoets.

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That's incredibly promising.

Especially the ability to change HBD directly to the Cuban peso, without having to go HBD -> Hive -> Bitcoin -> CUP, paying fees on each trade.

I just hope people use the applications. In the early days of Steem, one of the European crypto pre-paid cards started accepting Steem. But dumped it after a year as no-one was using it.

https://reddit.com/r/Money/comments/118kf8y/cubans_can_now_pay_their_electric_bill_using_hbd/
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Finally a use case. This means slowly we are going to get new users and they will arrive for Hive. And that is a sign of all the hustle paying off. Like this we need many small nations which would collectively help get Hive some use case and that is when our hard work for pushing hive would pay off.

Well there are a lot of use cases for HBD. They keep growing. We see 13 shops in Sucre accepting it.

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It's a very good service that was added, because if the rewards from Hive were used to convert into local currency and then pay the electric bill, that path was shortened a lot.
Well done @crptogeek! 🙌

I am a newcomer to your hive family so I want your full support

I think that is a great win but it really depends on where someone lives. I think it's much easier for less developed countries because costs are low but it's moving in the right direction.

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This is amazing ! 🎉🎉
These types of projects are going to help a lot of people and raise awareness about Hive, so it's a win-win situation as I see it. 😍
Keep up the great work and let's make it happen. 👏

Well it is an option. And it does show it spreading.

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This is also an example of the importance of a community, HiveCuba didn't make that happen, it was a member of the community who believe in Hive and saw an opportunity to create a startup by solving a problem. Also an example of how proud we are of every member, like @crptogeek in this case with @hiveremesas.

That is what it takes. Members of the community all showing their skills.

What other things can be purchased/paid through the app with HBD? Is this the only use case?

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Hello @taskmaster4450le. It's @CrptoGeek over here, creator of @HiveRemesas. Thanks for this post and for appreciating the work of my startup.

Regarding your question about what other services can be purchased or paid for through the app, I can tell you that:

Paying the electricity bill is just the last of the incorporated services. The cell phone and nauta (internet) account recharge is another of the app's services.

HiveRemesas also incorporates a remittance service (or crypto-fiat exchange between HIVE/HBD for local Cuban currency CUP and MLC).

My country is currently living a complex economic scenario in which workers receive their salary in CUP but the Cuban regime sells us food in MLC (Moneda Libremente Convertible, a sort of digital dollar).

That is why one of the most requested services by Cuban hivers is precisely the one of exchanging HIVE and HBD for MLC.

PS: I recently turned off the possibility of acquiring virtual VISA cards because the provider I was using (https://paywithmoon.com/) unexpectedly stopped providing services. But this was also one of the integrated services.

You can access the app, which is nothing more than a Telegram bot that picks up orders by going to t.me/HiveRemesasBot. Feel free to play with the commands to discover the flow behind this app.

Thanks again for the appreciation.

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@taskmaster4450le what he said!

@crptogeek this is very interesting and important work. I live in Mexico and would like to pick your brain about how it could be possible to do something similar here. I work for a real estate agency that accepts crypto. But no Hive yet. It'd be great if it could be implemented here. Not just for my business, of course. Would you be open to connect on discord? Or elsewhere if you prefer.

Thank you for the appreciation 🙌.

It would be a pleasure to help you. I'm not an expert on Discord but I think you can find me with this: CrptoGeek#2281.

If not, just let my know how I can found you.

I've sent you a friend request on discord. My handle is @misslasvegas#6566
But if it's easier for you to contact you elsewhere, please let me know.

Wow very interesting. A lot of things that Hive offered to us. This is a great idea.

I have the same thought, it would be better for Hive to stay away for now from massive institutions and keep growing slowly and organic, usually when corporations like Binance join a project and want part of the project as any other large business they want some type of control and things on their favor and most of the time thats when things change for worst, in so short period Hive has made a lot of progress and demonstrate the community can keep growing and building without any large corporation, thx for sharing ✌️

Yeah. I mean if Amazon adopted HBD, I would be thrilled. But the likelihood is not great.

Hive is about trudging, clawing and fighting for every victory. That is what we do.

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HBD use cases are expanding. This is a wonderful solution for Cubans and we need to make it operational in more countries. The Hive ecosystem continues to expand.

We are seeing the tentacles go into different places.

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This is amazing and is just more proof of the "we do it ourselves" approach.
Once there is a decent sized Hive community in any country (particularly those with unstable currencies), the opportunity (demand) arises for Hive entrepreneurs to create applications like this to allow HBD to be used for everyday payments.
Because it is so easy to build on Hive, the entry barriers are low and capital costs small.

Bottom up, decentralised, is how crypto will take over the world.

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If we wait for the large corporations to incorporate Hive into their payments infrastructure, we will be waiting a long time for that first corporation. We need to do things where the people are, and at their level. Then Hive van achieve success in the way Ernest Hemingway described how a character went bankrupt: first gradually, then suddenly.

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Exactly. We dont do fluff and press conferences. Instead, we have boots on the ground building. This is the difference between having a tour to a poor country and actually making a difference.

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It would be nice if we could be part of something that saves countless lives with these big picture attention grabbers, but as you say, I just don't think a platform like this is the answer to that, and that's totally fine. Not everything cool needs to save the world.

Ultimately, the bigger it gets, the more likely a billionaire can come along and centralise it. As much as Hive tries to protect against that, it's not possible to entirely prevent it if the powerful really wanted to.

It's nice not having all the attention like Elon Musk and Twitter. Just get our stuff done effectively and help as many as we can with what we have. That's pretty wholesome.

Exciting to hear real world usage like this though for sure!



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This is awesome . If Cuban start using HBD to pay bill , its mean HBD can be used with other stuff which actually possible . But , its gonna be game changer for HIVE if HBD being used to change BUSD in Binance.

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In Sucre they are buying goods and services using HBD and HIVE.

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It's a good start . I wish 2023 , more premise or vendor will allowed HBD or hive at their shop .

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This is wonderful news. In my opinion, being able to pay for services with cryptocurrencies is something that will be useful to all of us. Now I want to contact my Cuban friends and notify them

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This is what I'm talking about! This is exactly the kind of development that will help ensure Hive's long term viability and kick start an abundance economy in the places that need it the most. The more users we have in areas with high inflation, the better, just so long as we can get people using hive for exchange. 2 out of my 3 books have cover art that was paid for by hive. I'll gladly accept Hive for my work as well.

We can aim for 10 businesses in 10 cities in the world (not just accepting hive, but actually receiving hive as payment for a meaningful portion of their transactions), it sounds small but it would have a domino effect...

Great news, More of this!

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It all starts small and keep going. It is how Hive operates.

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This is where we start to win... Adoption matters a lot and we already have a huge community in Cuban who use Hive and that's really Great to hear about this news. It's starting from somewhere and adoption will spread more!

Waiting for the day to pay Bills in $HBD here.

I would pay my electric using HBD if I could. I would love to pay my rent using it.

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This is a plus to the hive ecosystem as a whole , such HBD adoption would also make HBD to get an increased popularity..

Hello

You know here in Venezuela several states are implementing the use of HBD in stores, in Portuguesa it is another state, a few months ago they held an event, but I think that lack of resources has not kept the events going.
This is great news that these countries adopt Hive, that Binance is making use of them.
https://hive.blog/hive-110011/@hiveportuguesa/bpsemyjd

Hopefully what is taking place in Sucre spreads to other areas.

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If that's what they're working on

Like Nigeria!!

This is excellent news ! I totally support the idea of starting small and local.

If HBD gets onto places like Binance or Coinbase, I feel it becomes too open to speculators and manipulators.

However, although I love the 20% APR return on HBD, in the long term I feel that it needs to be reduced. All the time the return is that high, people will prefer to hold onto it to get the earnings, which acts as a disincentive to converting it into a day-to-day medium of exchange.

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Wow! 🎊🎉👏👏👏 new feat attained. This is great news indeed. A step in the right direction and a big win🏆.

Kudos indeed to the team putting forward this initiative of decentralizing HBD, especially in areas that need it. One of the countries mentioned is mine and feel honoured that moves are made to better the our lives. Thank you🙏

I do know for sure that this will come a long way as needs are been met and problems solved the aim of the existence of an entity becomes useful and it's growth inevitable. Greater heights I pray🙏

If Nigeria could fast forward to this level it would be very awesome. We need this right now in the country. Everyone is stuck in the country and we can't even handle simple transactions. I did a week's worth of work and because of the banking crises in the country, I have still been waiting for the money.

I am happy for Cuba, I heard that the Venezuelans are also doing great on this front too.

Absolute game-changer. The biggest development with Bitcoin in the last few years has been the ability to pay real world expenses with it, whether it be via BTCPayServer, Galoy, Bitcoin Beach, or other services, people paying their utility bills, groceries, even gasoline, with Bitcoin, has had a tremendous impact.

With that being said, this is a huge development, regarding the acceptance of $HBD as a form of payment for electricity in Cuba. Since the 1950s, Cuba's economy has been isolated from much of the USD-denominated system. Having a work-around is vital to the progress of the Cuban economy, in the 21st century, and I believe Hive and HBD will play a role in bringing the people into the era of digital P2P payments without needing a bank account or depending on intermediaries, as SWIFT has pushed.

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