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I have had a bunch of these ideas kicking around in my head for years, and I’m going to start giving them out to entrepreneurs so we can get this party started in the Teranode era. If you turn my idea into a thriving company, please credit me and/or throw me a bone!
Now, for the content!
MNEEGram
Introduction
Global remittance is a massive business ripe for disruption.
In 2024, roughly half a trillion dollars flowed across borders through money‑transfer operators, and yet the cost of sending $200 still averages more than 6% according to the World Bank. Money sent from the United States to Latin America or Africa can face fees of 7 to 10%. While new apps promise to “send money instantly,” the reality is that traditional remittance companies like Western Union (NASDAQ: WU) and MoneyGram still rely on pre‑funded accounts, correspondent banks, and manually-settled FX desks to move value. The result is a system that appears modern but hides a web of capital‑intensive infrastructure, slow settlement, error-prone humans, opaque fees and limited innovation.
As I argued recently, BSV already won the protocol and scaling wars; the only battle left is adoption.
One natural frontier is remittances. MNEEGram is a concept that aims to transform the $700 billion remittance industry by leveraging BSV’s unbounded scalability and tokenization.
Before examining this new model, we must understand how the current system works and why its inefficiencies are baked in.
How MoneyGram & Western Union work
A customer‑friendly facade
From the customer’s perspective, the process seems simple. A sender walks into a MoneyGram or Western Union agent (a grocery store, pharmacy, or stand‑alone booth) or uses an app to fund a transfer. If it’s cash in, the agent collects $500 plus a fee, enters the recipient’s name, and prints a receipt. On the other side, the recipient visits a local agent with a reference number and a government‑issued ID. Cash is usually ready for pickup within ten minutes.
Behind that seemingly instant service lies decades-old plumbing. When a customer hands over $500 in Florida, MoneyGram does not literally send those dollars to the Philippines or Mexico or wherever else.
Instead, it credits a pre‑funded pool in the Philippines and debits a pool in the United States.
The company maintains pre‑funded Nostro accounts in multiple countries to ensure every payment can be honoured immediately. MoneyGram and Western Union have thousands of these accounts across correspondent banks, tying up millions in working capital. In short, money‑transfer companies must have pre‑funded accounts across the globe to source liquidity.
The messaging and settlement stack
The back‑end starts with a messaging layer: the remittance company’s internal system and SWIFT messages instructing counterparties to debit or credit Nostro accounts. Next comes liquidity provision: MoneyGram contracts with FX desks and correspondent banks to hold balances in pesos, rupees, naira, or whatever settlement currency is needed.
These intermediaries periodically settle via wire transfers and local clearing houses. Large transfers may require multiple hops across banks in different jurisdictions on the SWIFT network, creating latency and cost, with settlement dependent on local clearing systems and time zones.
To manage low‑volume corridors, remitters pre‑fund accounts or rely on third‑party FX providers, which introduces cost and complexity in places that can afford it the least and need help the most.
Counterparties and compliance
The number of counterparties is staggering: local banks holding Nostro/vostro balances, correspondent banks in New York or London, FX providers quoting spreads, regulators in each jurisdiction, and thousands of agents handling cash. Each adds a margin or fee. The average cost of a remittance includes:
- Liquidity costs: funds must be parked in foreign accounts, tying up capital and requiring interest spread margins.
- FX spreads: multiple conversions across currencies add basis points at every hop.
- Compliance overhead: KYC/AML checks, sanctions screening, and regulatory reporting demand expensive staff and software.
- Operational costs: rents, commissions for agents, IT maintenance, and risk reserves.
There is also a problem of fragmented infrastructure, regulatory barriers, and FX risk, making pre‑funding an expensive way to manage things. Remittance companies recover these costs by charging percentage fees and wide FX spreads. The World Bank’s Remittance Prices Worldwide database reports that sending money across borders costs an average of 6.49% of the amount sent.
The bottom line
MoneyGram isn’t moving your $500 across borders; instead, it is giving the recipient access to pre‑positioned cash and later squaring the books with banks, FX desks, and settlement networks. The speed you perceive as “instant” is an illusion created by high capital buffers and global cash pools. The system works, but only because money transfer giants pre‑fund accounts and charge enough fees to offset currency risk, compliance costs and working capital drag. This model cannot deliver materially cheaper remittances without sacrificing reliability or liquidity.
Enter MNEEGram: The BSV‑Powered alternative
MNEEGram flips the remittance model on its head. Rather than depending on multinational corporations to marshal liquidity and handle settlement, it uses MNEE tokens on the BSV blockchain as the unit of account and settlement. Here’s how it works:
- Digital liquidity pools: Instead of pooling dollars and pesos in corporate Nostro accounts, individuals and companies contribute liquidity in MNEE, BSV, or tokenized assets (stablecoins, gold, USD…) in an overlay network secured by a P2P finance protocol enforced by a smart contract. Anyone can prove their liquidity by staking funds into their wallet in compliance with the smart contract using platforms like Venmo, PayPal (NASDAQ: PYPL), WeChat, Zelle, or by holding assets in BSV, tokenized gold, or USDC or any other digital asset.
- Instant authorization and settlement: MNEEGram matches a sender and a liquidity provider when a remittance request comes in. The sender’s MNEE is locked in a smart contract and simultaneously released to the receiver’s account. Settlement occurs directly on chain and is settled within a single block, usually within minutes. Because BSV blocks are unbounded and Teranode BSV’s high‑performance implementation can process over a million transactions per second, MNEEGram can scale to global volumes without congestion. Fees are under one‑ten‑thousandth of a cent. The difference is revolutionary compared to the 6-10% fees in legacy remittances.
- Open APIs and oracles: MNEEGram exposes APIs that connect to existing payment apps and banking systems. Oracles can verify fiat balances or off‑chain events. This means entrepreneurs can plug local payment rails directly into the MNEEGram overlay without asking a corporate treasury for permission. Regulatory compliance (KYC, AML, and reporting) is layered as micro‑services on top of the base protocol rather than embedded in every transaction; this reduces overhead and allows jurisdiction‑specific rules.
- Cash‑in/cash‑out points: For users who still need cash, MNEEGram integrates with ATMs and local merchants. A shopkeeper might accept MNEE and hand out local currency, earning a small spread. These agents compete on price rather than being captive outlets of a single corporation. Because the core engine is digital, cash handling is optional rather than central to the business.
Why BSV?
No other chain can support this vision. In fact, Ripple tried to do this years ago and failed due to its lack of scalability!
And now they are looking to work with Stellar, which is sad because it’s just a fork of Ripple with similar limitations…
BSV’s UTXO architecture and unbounded block size allow millions of transactions per block. While BTC struggles with seven transactions per second and promotes second‑layer solutions like Lightning (which ALSO relies on pre‑funded channels), BSV treats the base layer as a global transaction bus, letting Teranode push throughput into the billions of transactions daily.
With fees measured in fractions of a cent, settlement costs become negligible. MNEE tokens on BSV benefit from deterministic fees, immediate finality, and a stable protocol, which is perfect for a high‑volume remittance system.
From corporate liquidity to entrepreneurial liquidity
The most radical implication of MNEEGram is that it democratizes liquidity provision. Today, only banks and money‑transfer operators can pre‑fund accounts globally. Tomorrow, any individual with spare cash or digital assets can become a remittance “node.” Suppose you live in Mexico City and have pesos in your bank account. You could stake those funds via a regulated gateway, advertise your liquidity on the MNEEGram marketplace, and earn a tiny fee whenever someone in the U.S. wants to send pesos. Your risk is minimal because smart contracts ensure you only release pesos when the corresponding MNEE is locked on chain. Competition among thousands of such liquidity providers will drive fees toward zero.
This P2P liquidity model opens a new entrepreneurial opportunity:
- Micro‑finance businesses: Individuals or small firms can specialize in particular corridors (e.g., U.S.‑to‑Philippines) and aggregate liquidity from local savers.
- On/off‑ramp agents: Shopkeepers and ATMs can offer cash-in/cash-out services, earning spreads smaller than legacy remittance providers but benefiting from higher volume.
- Overlay services: Software developers can build KYC modules, compliance engines, risk models, and user interfaces on top of MNEEGram’s core smart contracts. Because BSV’s protocol is set in stone, developers can invest confidently without fear of unexpected rule changes.
From a macro perspective, replacing corporate pre‑funding with a borderless marketplace of liquidity providers reduces capital requirements and fosters financial inclusion. Someone in Lagos could use her smartphone to supply liquidity for transfers from London to Nigeria and earn income commensurate with her contribution. In corridors where banks have exited due to de‑risking, entrepreneurs could fill the void. By compressing fees from six percent to near zero, MNEEGram puts billions of dollars back into the hands of migrant workers and their families.
Cost reduction? No! Paradigm shift!
Skeptics may argue that remittance companies already offer near‑instant transfers, so what’s the difference? The difference is true finality versus the illusion of speed. MoneyGram’s cash is “instant” because it was pre‑funded yesterday. Settlement happens later, off-chain, through multiple banks and FX desks. That model ties up capital and passes risk to users through fees. MNEEGram’s “instant” means settlement and clearing occur at the same time, on chain. Liquidity is not pre‑committed globally; it flows peer‑to‑peer in response to demand.
I hate using the overused AI slop phrase here, but this is a profound shift. It challenges the idea that only large corporations can manage cross‑border liquidity. It transforms remittances from a capital‑intensive service into a marketplace. It aligns with the bigger thesis of BSV: that simple, scalable, peer‑to‑peer protocols can replace complex, expensive, centralized systems. By using tokens to represent value and smart contracts to govern flows, we can build financial infrastructure that is transparent, fair and efficient.
Conclusion: A call to action
Legacy remittances feel modern because they have smartphone apps and glossy ads, but they rest on a century‑old foundation of correspondent banking and pre‑funded accounts. They charge high fees not out of greed but because their cost structure demands it. MNEEGram shows that another world is possible. By leveraging BSV’s unbounded scale and the composability of tokenization, we can build a borderless network where individuals control liquidity, settlement is truly instant and fees are microscopic.
This is more than a way to save money.
It is a revolution in how we think about moving value across borders. It invites entrepreneurs to participate in global finance, regulators to rethink compliance as a modular layer, and consumers to demand transparency and fairness. The blockchain economy doesn’t know it yet, but simplicity, scalability, and economic truth will win in the long run.
We already have the technology. The next step is the courage to leave the old rails behind. Let’s build the future of remittances: fast, peer‑to‑peer, and open to all.
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