4 ms·

The costs for transactions are not fixed to a percentage of the total amount sent but on the size of the transaction and the network congestion. Moving one bil

• JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  > Moving one billion USD worth of BTC can cost as little as 0.065 BTC or ~440 USD Which is ridiculous, given anyone (legally) moving a billion dollars pays zero for an instantaneous Fedwire.
  • decentralised 6y ago
    Not familiar with Fedwire. Surely it won't be free to move fiat via any payment network. Do you happen to have a source? PS: seems not to be available to retail customers?
    • fennecfoxen 6y ago
      The "Fedwire Funds Service" is the Federal Reserve's wire transfer payment system used to move USD. I'm actually writing an integration to it right this moment (the old fixed-width format, not the new XML one, yay). Naturally this interface is not available directly to retail customers, but if you actually send a wire transfer from your bank, this is the system you will use. Your bank will generally make this available to you through some online interface. If not, you can visit the teller. They will likely charge you $20-$40 to send a wire if you are a small account, but, even with something like Chase's mid-level "Signature" checking (~$10-$20k minimum to avoid monthly fees iirc) they will waive this fee. And, of course, if you're really moving a billion, not only would you have a banking relationship where your wire fees are waived, that fee would be peanuts anyway.
      • decentralised 6y ago
        Im in the EU and we don't have Fedwire here. I can tell you that ABN AMRO charges me ~10 euros for transferring ~200 eur to the UK (with conversion to GBP). Generally speaking I'm quite familiar with payment infra in Europe, I've worked on it for ~20 years after all.
        • fennecfoxen 6y ago
          I am not sure how to engage with this reply. It is of course unsurprising that European banks do not have integrations with the Federal Reserve for moving USD. European banks often have access to international systems like SWIFT and SEPA, and various national payments systems, instead. I have precious little information to offer you on the workings of European funds transfer services, however; I posted here to discuss Fedwire specifically, since you brought it up.
          • decentralised 6y ago
            Well, first of all thank you for your earlier comment. My anxiety is peaking lately... I have no idea exactly why I answered like that but what I meant was that while I'm not familiar with the US payment system, I do know the European one quite well and that's why earlier I'd expressed incredulity that any traditional banking system could offer zero cost transfers. I think I didn't notice you were not JumpCrisscross
  • tonfa 6y ago
    If you want to convert between money, it's slight more expensive but marginally so (15k USD for converting 1B with IB, 8k if you change more than 5B per month)
• ric2b 6y ago
  I'd like to note that they overpaid ridiculously on that fee, they probably just didn't care about the fee since it was a rounding error. Even $15 would have been too much, looking at other transactions in the block.