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> and has use cases that beat regular cash, Tell me.
by chx 8y ago
> and has use cases that beat regular cash,
Tell me.
- Semaphor 8y agoTransferring money from one continent to another.
- raverbashing 8y agoCalculate the full chain of costs then come back here with how it compares to Transferwise or other methods
- Semaphor 8y agoWell… Cost: a) BTC-BTC Transfer: Only BTC transfer fee. Beats TransferWise by a large Margin. b) BTC-USD: Depends on many variables, including if the receiving country taxes BTC to fiat. Considering how expensive transferwise is, it's probably a wash. Speed depends on if GP literally meant Cash. If so, BTC is obviously far faster and easier as you still need to get you cash into your bank account. Otherwise… Transferwise takes a few hours, BTC 10-20 minutes I think? Privacy: The Banks and TW know who sent how much to whom. With BTC everyone knows that A sent X to B, but not necessarily who A and B are. As this transaction is public forever, I'd probably prefer TW from a privacy perspective, this of course changes with something like Monero.
- raverbashing 8y agoUSD-BTC and BTC-USD (or any currency) have a cost and a delay as well
- Semaphor 8y agoYes, I mentioned that.
- arcticbull 8y agoNobody takes BTC in exchange for goods and services, absolutely nobody. In this context it's at best an intermediate representation with huge FOREX risk. That means (a) is a false equivalence as unlike (b) it only represents a small slice of the transaction.
- alphast0rm 8y agoThat's not true, there are large retailers that directly accept BTC, like Newegg [1] and Overstock [2]. There are also services like Bitrefill to purchase gift cards using various cryptocurrencies for use at places that don't directly accept BTC: Amazon, Ebay, Walmart, Best Buy, and Target to name a few of the 750+ supported [3]. [1] https://promotions.newegg.com/nepro/16-6277/index.html https://promotions.newegg.com/nepro/16-6277/index.html [2] https://help.overstock.com/help/s/article/Bitcoin https://help.overstock.com/help/s/article/Bitcoin [3] https://www.bitrefill.com/?hl=en https://www.bitrefill.com/?hl=en
- arcticbull 8y agoThere are more that did and stopped than do. And to your own point of the ones that do, the vast majority do so via intermediary like bitpay because they dont want BTC they just want money. The trajectory of acceptance has a negative slope. Even Overstock doesn't accept BTC on mobile according to their help page. Further, since you've got to foot the transaction fee (~$1.50) instead of the merchant and the merchant has already padded their prices for a 3% credit card fee, you're getting royally screwed. I pay with my 2% cash back credit card, get all sorts of warranties and protections, and you pay 3% + $1.50 and get nothing but losing your ability to file your taxes with TurboTax because they dont support crypto on Form 8949.
- alphast0rm 8y ago> Nobody takes BTC in exchange for goods and services, absolutely nobody. I was simply trying to show that your original statement was hyperbole, as there are clearly notable retailers that do. Also as a consumer, I don't see why your point about intermediaries is relevant (barring the marginal price difference between them). If you are planning on purchasing something from a business you don't really care if they are using Intuit or Square to process credit cards transactions, just that they accept credit cards for payments.
- xtracto 8y agoMXN to GBP : I can't do it. BTC to BTC :I can do it. Non of the fancy services allow me to send money from Mexico to the UK. It is crypto or paying for SWIFT, Western Union or similar. With very high costs.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- arcticbull 8y agoTotally can, FairFX and TorFX (both UK-regulated money transmitters) will safely and securely make an MXN to GBP transfer for right around 2.5% and believe it or not Western Union is usually quite competitive. Next time check out cuex.com which compares options for you. BTC is a nightmare. You have to find an exchange in Mexico (which won't run away with your money a la Quadriga) and they'll take 1-2% and sit on the transfer for a few days. Then you have to transfer from there to another exchange in the UK paying a BTC exchange fee, then cash out in the UK, they'll take another 1-2%. In the week the exchanges have been camping on your money if you ever see it again, the forex risk is astronomical as it regularly swings +/- 20% weekly. Then due to the inevitable change in value of BTC during the week your transfer takes, you now have reporting obligations to your local tax authorities in BOTH Mexico AND the UK. This may require hiring an accountant to resolve which adds yet another mess of fees. Pay a service 2-2.5% and be done with it or: 1-2% fee to Exchange 1 + a few days FOREX risk + the current BTC fee of $1.26 + 1-2% fee to exchange 2 + the risk anyone in the chain is going to ruin you because they're totally unregulated fly-by-night operations then learn the nuances of both Mexican and UK tax law in regards to capital gains. This is a common crypto shill talking point. It's been thoroughly disproven that crypto is better for international remittences than existing solutions. It's a solved problem.
- xtracto 8y ago> Totally can, FairFX and TorFX (both UK-regulated money transmitters) will safely and securely make an MXN to GBP transfer for right around 2.5% and believe it or not Western Union is usually quite competitive. Next time check out cuex.com which compares options for you. I tried both of them and I can't (I am living in Mexico). I don't understand why you think BTC is a nightmare. For me, living in Mexico, and dealing with MXN and GBP (my brother is in Northen Ireland) it has worked wonders. You are assuming that Bitcoin exchanges in Mexico are unregulated, when they are VERY regulated. You are making negative assumptions for every Crypto step while making positive assumptions for every step in your scenario. I does not make sense.
- dzhiurgis 8y agoInteractive Brokers easily beats Transferwise
- chx 8y agoIB is a stock and similar trading platform and not a transfer company. What am I missing?
- dzhiurgis 8y agoYou can do forex at interbank rates. Major gotcha is to have bank accounts in both countries with your name. Just fund your acc from one country, do forex, withdraw in another. https://gfmasset.com/2018/09/better-than-transferwise-saving-thousands-on-international-transfers-with-an-interactive-brokers-account/ https://gfmasset.com/2018/09/better-than-transferwise-saving...
- quickthrower2 8y agoAnonymous transactions at a distance.
- PhilippGille 8y agoMicropayments on the web without users having to create an account. For example paying a few cents for reading a news article, without an account on the news site and without the high fees for a payment processor. (Via Lightning Network) Example news site: https://yalls.org https://yalls.org Example browser extension for great UX: https://github.com/wbobeirne/joule-extension https://github.com/wbobeirne/joule-extension Or even nanopayments for single API calls, between the browser and a server or between servers. Example pay-per-call web service / API: https://lightning.ws https://lightning.ws (disclaimer: my project, based on another project by me: https://github.com/philippgille/ln-paywall https://github.com/philippgille/ln-paywall)
- mruts 8y agoSeeing how slow and expensive both BTC and ETH are, micropayments aren’t really viable, tbh. The mining and gas fees for BTC and ETH respectively are going to be higher than the cut a payment processor would take. The one advantage that you might be alluding to is that bitcoins are divisible into satoshi’s, which are much more granular than cents.
- Semaphor 8y agoWhile I don't agree that crypto is currently generally usable for micropayments, I'm not sure the current ~$0.045/transfer fee for ETH is really more than a payment processor would take. And that's if you want really fast confirmations.
- PhilippGille 8y agoI was specifically talking about the Lightning Network, a second layer that facilitates Bitcoin's smart contract capabilities to enable off-chain payments via so called payment channels. There's no mining involved during transactions in the channel - only for opening and closing a channel, making the transactions almost instant. Thanks to proper routing you can reach most of the peers even with a single channel. It even adds some privacy because it uses onion routing, and the payments are not less secure because each off-chain transaction can be used as valid on-chain transaction should either party wish to do so, closing the channel. There's much more to it, many smart people have put a lot of thought into LN, so I recommend reading the whitepaper and other documentation about it.
- mruts 8y agoBuying drugs, avoiding taxes, money laundering, etc.
- stale2002 8y agoCensorship resistant electronic, financial transactions. The evidence shows that it is much easier to censor a credit card payment, or bank transaction, than it is to censor a crypto transaction.
- arcticbull 8y agoWhich only matters if you're trying to do illegal things on an international scale. Locally, you've always got cash.
- stale2002 8y agoThere are lots of perfectly legal things that get censored all the time, by both the government and private companies. Adult content is one area that comes to mind. If you run a business in this area, on the internet, which is perfectly legal, you will quickly find that every major financial institution refuses to do business with you.
- arcticbull 8y agoThere are payment processors that cater to that market. They charge large fees (up to 20%) for card transactions, though that's actually due to the crazy-high chargeback risk. People's spouses tend to discover their subscriptions, then they declare it wasn't them, their card was stolen, and a chargeback follows.
- stale2002 8y agoIndeed, that's my point. If you do business in one of these controversial areas, then you will quickly find that you are being charged extremely high costs and/or kicked off of their network.
- arcticbull 8y agoThey're not extremely high, they're the cost of doing business.
- icey 8y agoSometimes it's nicer to send money than it is to authorize someone to take money from an account, especially if you're unsure of the recipient's ability or desire to protect that account information (credit card number, bank account info, etc). For me, Bitcoin has effectively replaced cashier's checks.
- arcticbull 8y agoPopmoney, Venmo, Square Cash all allow you to do that without the massive FOREX risk and tax reporting requirements.
- icey 8y agoCool, and I use some of those too; but there have been cases _for me_ where BTC has been a lot easier.