Bitcoin in the Caribbean Series: Reporting On Costa Rica

Featured Food - Gallo Pinto (Popular Costa Rican Dish)

This is commentary based on the AMERICAN EXPATRIATE COSTA RICA article titled "Bitcoin Offers Alternative to Costa Rica Banking Restrictions". This article was from 6/2016 with reflection now in June 2017.

This video is part of my Bitcoin in the Caribbean Series where I will report on the use of Bitcoin and crypto currencies in the Caribbean. There will be a complete playlists on YouTube with respect to this topic.

You can read below or look at my source video that can be found here:

If you have any questions or comments please add them below.

Rough Transcript of Video:

Good afternoon guys. Welcome to the Sobuka channel. Today the Caribbean island that I will be discussing is Costa Rica. Since I have started this series on Bitcoin use in the Caribbean and Africa, I thought it could be interesting to also show case a popular dish from that country. The dish you are looking at is called Gallo Pinto which consists of a combination of vegetables, beans, rice, and eggs being optional as shown in the picture. So when you go to Costa Rica, you now know of 1 popular dish you can try out. At the end of this video, I will have a link on how you can create this dish in under 3 minutes so stay tuned.

Alright so moving on here, so I found this article on http://www.usexpatcostarica.com that discusses how "Bitcoin Offers Alternative to Costa Rica Banking Restrictions' This article is about a year old.

But before i move further on this article, our congress in the United States are trying to increase their capacity to seize property that flow in and out of the United States. So since bitcoin is considered an asset, it would fall under this new bill that congress is considering. So as i go through this article please keep this congressional proposal in mind. That specific bill is currently known as the 'Combating Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Counterfeiting Act of 2017.'

Moving on this article focuses on American Expatriates. For non-americans who are unknown of what expatriates are, they are just americans who choose to live outside of the United States for example, Jamaica or Nigeria. This article really is considering this group of people as the perfect use case for Bitcoin adoption as an alternative to Costa Rica banking restrictions.

But whatever odd reason this article does not go into too much detail specifically on what types of banking regulations are in Costa Rica.

It does mention the following two reasons.

1. The first one being the IRS in the United States makes it harder and expensive for Americans offshore to manage their accounts.
2. Also mentions it takes days to wire money back and forth from Costa Rica to the US.

Therefore the advantages of Bitcoin in Costa Rica include the following 5 reasons.

1. Receive cash in person, in Costa Rica.
2. Exchange bitcoin for something of value such as goods or services.
3. Convert international money transfer into a domestic bank transfer fully within costa rica.
4. Pay a bill online in costa rica that normally requires a bank account.
5. Have money sent via moneygram or western union to a person in Costa Rica.

Of course none of the described benefits are specifically endorsed or provided by the banks or money transfer services mentioned above so to workaround exchanges like Helsinki, Finland based localbitcoins.com provide geographically specific markets to exchange bitcoin, complete with escrow delivery between parties using cash and bank transfers.

The comments section is open to everyone. Especially if you are living overseas outside the US or know of anyone outside on those places like the Caribbean and Africa, comment on what is going on over there with respect to bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. I definitely know that Steemit, the social media platform on its own block chain is growing with subscribers all around the world. You can also find me on Steemit.

Link to how to make Gallo Pinto in three minutes can be found here: