Hawala
I <i>almost</i> linked to this, too, in the "Western Union says Bitcoin is not ready for international transfer" discussion[1].<p>The interesting thing about Hawala is that it provides a ready source of liquidity in local currencies. If someone was to link the two (ie, a local Hawala agent accepted a Bitcoin transfer from an <i>untrusted</i> source, and then moved the money via the trusted Hawala network) then almost all the problems of Bitcoin would go away.<p>It would also set just about every TLA agency in the US looking at you (Semi-anonymous crypto-currency which has been used in drug markets + untracable Islamic money transfer network? There's a techno-thriller plot right there). OTOH, Hawala agents seem to ignore US laws at the moment, so they might not care about this either.<p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6665635" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6665635</a>