Not too long ago, Bitcoin core developer Peter Todd spoke on a panel at the 2019 MIT Bitcoin Expo.

BTC vs. Western Union

The developer said that Bitcoin’s real competitor is Western Union, and not with Visa or Mastercard.

“When you look at the history of Western Union, it’s mostly a history of dodging regulations all around the world and paying billions of dollars worth of fines and fees, and so on, to make this happen,” he said as reported by The Daily Hodl.

The man continued and explained “Of course, we don’t recognize that – because we just go see the friendly Western Union agent. But that’s what’s happening in the background there, and it’s a constant fight for them –  that’s better competition to Bitcoin.”

The online publication revealed that Todd worked for R3 and he’s one of the people who created global payments platform Corda Settler.

It was also reported that the developer got into the crypto space due to the freedom that it provides and advocates.

Head over to the online publication’s original article in order to find out more details that Todd revealed.

Western Union and Ripple

Western Union has been in the spotlight a while ago in connection with Ripple.

Western Union’s CEO Hikmet Ersek offered the latest update regarding a potential partnership with Ripple during the World Economic Forum in Davos.

He said that they are still testing Ripple’s solutions in order to be able to decide whether Ripple can enhance their services.

On the other hand, it has already been revealed that BeeTech Global, a Brazil-based payment service, uses RippleNet to make remittance payments from people all over the globe.

The fees that are used by the company are much lower compared to the ones of Western Union, and the speed of transactions is much faster compared to the ones of SWIFT.