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> “Traditional money transfers are relatively costly due to currency exchange fees, and can take up to a few days” I would like to see some worked examples her
by psergeant 8y ago
> “Traditional money transfers are relatively costly due to currency exchange fees, and can take up to a few days”
I would like to see some worked examples here that take into account local Bitcoin pricing and the time taken to withdraw from exchanges, vs Western Union and other commercial “Send Money” organisations. The space is intensely competitive, so I suspect the margin consumers pay if they do a minimum of research is tiny, so I’m skeptical that Magic Bitcoin Magic is somehow making this better.
- kown223 8y agoIn my country the spreed to exchange eur or usd to local current is huge, you lose at least 10%
- psergeant 8y agoThanks for the data point! What’s the spread between BTC and your local currency vs BTC/USD? Is Bitcoin legal in your country? Are there reliable exchanges? What’s the cash-out wait? Thanks in advance!
- throwaway13337 8y agoI use transferwise all the time for usd to eur. The loss is closer to 1%. E.g. 1k usd costs $10 to transfer at the googled exchange rate. Better solutions are out there. Bitcoin is, as always, a solution looking for a problem.
- anonoholic 8y agoI have used TransferWise, and yes, <1%; however https://revolut.com/ https://revolut.com/ have recently added virtual bank accounts, and currently add no fee for market rate transfers.
- jgh 8y agoi recently used transferwise to convert a bunch of money and it seemed like all in the fees were closer to 0.1% than 1%. I think if you do larger sums of money the fees get cheaper though because the cost to transfer into transferwise is around $20 or something for ACH pull, but the fees for the currency exchange is a slightly worse exchange rate (though still much better than you would get at a bank)
- yani 8y agoTransferwise is good but its network goal is to make money out of the transfers. Cryptos network doesnt share this goal
- DasIch 8y agoMiners don't get paid anymore?
- anonymouz 8y agoGreat that all those exchanges aren't charging any fees and there's no transaction cost for Bitcoin... I recently did a lot of EUR-USD transfers and have evaluated several options. I came to the same conclusion as other posters here: Services like Transferwise and Currencyfair are all very cheap, and do the job well and without risk. Going through Bitcoin was not even close to competitive.
- joering2 8y agoDid you at least google Transferwise to see all horror stories of people getting their wires frozen? Really curious of your definition of “without risk”
- anonymouz 8y agoBy that I mean that they are registered and regulated within the EU and other countries they operate in. The people operating the service are known and comply with applicable regulation, so that I can be reasonably confident nothing shady is going on and that I can get legal recourse in case something is wrong. And no, despite doing some research on Transferwise before using them I didn't run into horror stories of them freezing wires. Transferwise has always been very professional and helpful in interactions with me (more so than my own bank).
- joering2 8y agoHave you ever transferred 120,000 EUR with them, or - you know - any serious amount?
- tim333 8y agoTransferwise is quite cheap. I haven't been able to change bitcoins efficiently to many currencies. Euros and usd are the main ones. I'd say transferwise is probably quicker and cheaper but you never know. The actual btc-fiat exchange can be very cheap if you are a 'maker' in the market.
- tripletao 8y agoProviding liquidity (placing a non-marketable limit order and waiting for it to get matched) doesn't necessarily save you the spread. Your order is more likely to execute if the price moves against you, so the adverse election hurts. Market microstructure is tricky...
- Symbiote 8y agoFor European currencies (I use GBP, EUR, DKK, SEK) I find Transferwise to transfer within 5 minutes. That's reasonable, as banks in those places usually support very fast local transfers, and that's what Transferwise is doing. A bitcoin exchange could meet this speed, but won't be able to beat it.
- yani 8y agoMost cryptos are faster than any type of wire transfer except card payments.
- isostatic 8y agoI transferred some money on Thursday from one uk bank account to another at another institution. Took less time than to log on to the second bank to confirm it had gone through.
- psergeant 8y agoSure, if you don’t factor in the conversion to and from money that can be used to buy groceries and petrol.
- Symbiote 8y agoNot necessarily, in Europe. Many electronic bank transfers are approximately instant.
- hndamien 8y agoTime and fees from exchanges. Some routes work out OK, some not so great. Often the problem is liquidity in local markets. Even for small amounts. What look like arbitrage opportunities are really information about money movement inefficiencies.