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If we both join the bitcoin network, we can exchange $1B for $0.48. If we both join set up accounts at a regular bank like RBC, we can exchange $1B for free.

• pbhjpbhj 6y ago
  What's the cost if I'm with HSBC in Hong-Kong and you're with Chase in USA, say?
  • vmception 6y ago
    $50 if both using the same currency. $50 + a few basis point spread if using a different currency, but you don't know exactly what that spread will be from the sending bank and what the spread will be at the receiving bank, so you can lose anywhere from .001% to 4% with major currencies.
    • greenshackle2 6y ago
      I imagine there are also fees involved to turn $1B worth of bitcoins to local currency.
      • vmception 6y ago
        There are, there is also a parallel global economy that allows for obtaining goods, services and investing in private equity or other assets directly using bitcoin, so those conversion fees are not an issue for the bitcoin owner. To counter the easiest rebuttal, there probably are only about $1bn worth of things to buy using bitcoin any given day, most of which are other new digital assets that would not be a great investment and would otherwise struggle to obtain any purchases. But for reference, in today's market you could expect to be able to negotiate a 1-2% spread in converting $1Bn in bitcoin to US Dollars. It would have to be multiple orders throughout the day as an OTC dealer will quote on price for $100m and a different price for $1bn. Block orders in the bitcoin OTC market often has more daily volume than the lit market on exchanges. Similar to other commodities markets.
        • greenshackle2 6y ago
          Yeah, if you're fully buying into BTC, doing BTC transfer makes obvious sense. I was trying to see which is cheaper for the use case of "I hold USD in the US, I want to spend it locally as HKD in Hong Kong", which I think is what pbhjpbhj is asking.
          • vmception 6y ago
            yes that is one use case of digital assets like BTC: converting any international money transfer to a domestic money transfer, greatly reducing compliance flags, time and possibilities of banking errors that no bank wants to be accountable for and figure out themselves. often times leaving no record in payment networks like SWIFT, because only two local payment networks were used, one in their respective monetary union. the cost is 100% tied to liquidity of that market. the bigger and deeper the market, the lower the transaction cost. It is more likely that HKD's bitcoin market would be less liquid than USD's bitcoin market, so you would want your bank in Hong Kong to accept a USD deposit from a local OTC broker, and then convert to HKD at that point if you wanted or needed it.
        • londons_explore 6y ago
          Even a $1M order has more than 1-2% slippage in my experience... $1B will probably have much more.
          • vmception 6y ago
            Negotiate harder, and in USD. Typically I will begin placing an order with two OTC desks at the same time, while also looking at exchange order books. I game the brokers against each other. If it is a smaller order (5 - 6 figures) I will compare Coinbase Pro's fees with whatever my OTC desk is telling me. OTC has to be less than Coinbase Pro. So thats how I pretty much guarantee a less than 1% fee. $1bn = multiple OTC desks and multiple orders. The bitcoin market is much deeper than people think and gets deeper every day.
            • rdbell 6y ago
    • bufferoverflow 6y ago
      It's never .001%. I've done so many international transactions with currency conversion (one of the most liquid pairs - USR-EUR). On the best day a bank will get that 3% difference. I've been using TransferWise in the last year, it's definitely better, but still over 1%.
      • jeltz 6y ago
        I usually get between 0.5% and 1% spread at my bank and my company is tiny so these are list rates.
      • vmception 6y ago
        I get extremely tight spreads closer to .001% with Bank of America wire transfers, Wells Fargo wire transfers, and ATM withdrawals in foreign countries, specifically Mexican Pesos, Swiss Francs, Euros. It exactly matches the spot FX rate that I would see on my broker's terminals. Transferwise has not been better for me, except to easily allow me to have Euro bank accounts as an American.
• grubles 6y ago
  Well the point is with Bitcoin you don't have to trust RBC to not freeze and/or abscond with your $1B.
  • cycrutchfield 6y ago
    Are you really going to try to argue that you are less likely to get scammed or hacked with Bitcoin than with a traditional bank?
    • sp332 6y ago
      Not scammed, but maybe a regulator will take an interest in $1B being moved around.
      • hendzen 6y ago
        Is the average person in our society better off in a world where anyone can move $1B anonymously? Why do you think regulators might want to take an interest in such transfers?
        • czbond 6y ago
          Bitcoin transactions are already being de-anonymized at least in the U.S. - and if not today, the permanent ledger record means that the 'data exhaust' (hidden data surrounding a transaction) can back into it.
        • toss1 6y ago
          No the average person is less well off in a world where $1 billion can be moved anonymously. The need to move such funds anonymously is usually due to illegal activities, money laundering, or at least tax evasion (evasion, not avoidance). This leaves every average person at the very least, on the hook to pay for those taxes evaded, or lacking the services they would have provided. If the need is due to criminality beyond tax evasion, every average person suffers the corrosive effect of that criminal activity (e.g., while I'm for most drug legalization, I can't begin to argue that organized criminal drug distribution is anything but a massive destructive tax on society - & in fact, a main point of legalization is to eliminate that corrosive costs of gangs). So, the average person is definitely worse off with the existence of an ability to move & billions anonymously. (edit: avoided/evaded)
• gutino 6y ago
  What about the Government taxes, 1 Billon no matter that will pay a jucy tax slice.
  • tialaramex 6y ago
    Where are you that has a transaction tax on account transfers? Not the US certainly, and not anywhere in the EU.
    • pjc50 6y ago
      There's a proposal (not implemented yet) for a 0.1% "Tobin tax" in the EU: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/legislative-train/theme-deeper-and-fairer-internal-market-with-a-strengthened-industrial-base-taxation/file-financial-transaction-tax https://www.europarl.europa.eu/legislative-train/theme-deepe...
      • vageli 6y ago
        Total aside but I love the train theme to indicate status of the proposal, and showing who is currently "holding up" the bill.
      • tialaramex 6y ago
        Sure, which is why I said on account transfers. A Tobin tax wouldn't impact those, the one the EU wanted was for financial instruments. e.g. if you buy and sell a new financial product on average fifty times per day to take advantage of some weird quirk - because you can make 0.001% per trade this way, the Tobin tax makes that money losing and you stop doing it. Is that a good idea? I'm not sure, and apparently enough EU states weren't sure that this never got past Council. But even if it's a great idea and gets implemented it doesn't care about moving money from one account to another itself which is all we're talking about here.
    • toss1 6y ago
      depends on the nature of the transaction & the parties - 'transfer/transaction taxes aren't the only issue Sales or gift taxes could apply. So could import /export taxes depending on the endpoints. Could it appear as income/gains to one party or another? etc... of course it can often be structured to avoid such taxes, but it requires forethought. I wouldn't even think of making a $multi-million move without first consulting a very high end attorney in the appropriate field.
• ShorsHammer 6y ago
  Find it incredibly hard to believe they will allow an intra-bank transfer of $1B for free, even just going to another Canadian bank all bets are off and they certainly would want something in return. Do have any proof of this claim or is it extrapolated from the fees for sending $200 to another RBC account?
  • alexpotato 6y ago
    If I owned bank B and someone was going to send me $1B from bank A, I would pay the fees that bank A was charging the customer. Source: I've worked in banking and seen this even on the personal level (not at the $1B level of course).
• Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  Are you trying to argue that a financial transaction - a service provided by a bank where THEY take all the risk and responsibility of said transfer - should be free of charge? I mean if I transferred a billion and my bank made a mistake, I would not lose any money. Make a typo in your bitcoin transaction, and you're screwed.
  • hh3k0 6y ago
    You're just as screwed if you make a typo in your bank transaction, though.
    • ForHackernews 6y ago
      lol no you're not. call them up and they'll fix it.
      • parliament32 6y ago
        If you wire the money to the wrong account? No, you're SOL unless the receiving bank and receiving account decides to reverse the transaction, which is fairly rare.
        • nickfromseattle 6y ago
          I've had people send me $ to the wrong account, and it gets rejected by the receiving bank, I believe because the name / information doesn't match what's listed on the receiving bank.
          • sumedh 6y ago
            > I believe because the name / information doesn't match what's listed on the receiving bank. reply In India and Australia, the banks just use the account number not the name. If you screw that up its completely your fault. The bank might help but its not obligated to do so since you accepted these terms and conditions.
        • 6y ago
• ur-whale 6y ago
  > It should be ready at the maximum in a couple of days and I will forward it to you as soon as I have it. And, barring a collusion of miners, virtually noone could have prevented or reverted that transaction.
• lixtra 6y ago
  That bank transfer won’t happen for free. Both sides will have to go through KYC procedures and it will take plenty of time if one of the parties is new.
• zMiller 6y ago
  You will never be able to exchange 1 billion dollars at will with RBC or any other bank.
• koonsolo 6y ago
  You don't seem to know much about banking and large sums of money in practice. Let me give you an example which I know exists: EU airliner buys an airplane at Boeing. How do you transfer the money? This is how they do it today: They are at Boeing where the transfer needs to go through. The money needs to be transferred then and there. So airliner calls their bank to transfer the money. But there is a 9 hour difference, so they need to wait when EU bank opens, but before the US bank closes. Call the bank, transfer first to UK bank (I can't remember why they had to do this :(), confirm money is there. Then transfer from UK to US, confirm that the money is there. This all before the US bank closes of course. Very cumbersome and James Bond like. And I'm not an expert in international money transfers, but I'm guessing it's not 0.
  • moksly 6y ago
    That’s not how large transfers work at all though. Banks have international agreements, or go through 3rd parties that have. You’ll also never be expected to pay right then and there, if you’re a respectable enterprise entity, the other part will expect you to pay and the funds to arrive within reasonable time, which can be half a year later. As for the transfers themselves, they are typically free. You’re such a big customer to the bank, and so is the recipient to their bank, that the banks are earning their money without taking transfer fees. The most important part, and the reason things like bitcoin will never replace old school banking, is that you can roll the money back or cancel if you decide to walk away from the deal like Norwegian just did for 90something Boeing aircraft that they can no longer afford because of corona. Sure you’ll spend a few years in legal, but that’s besides the point.
    • antepodius 6y ago
      That walkback depends on trust, honor, and suability between all actors involved. You can walk back a bitcoin transaction, too, if you have those preconditions. Just ask the other guy to send the money back.
      • heisbsissi 6y ago
        By that logic you can walk back any transaction that has ever occurred regardless of how it was sent. Bitcoin advocacy just seems like an exercise in sophistry.
• wolco 6y ago
  Bank limit aut
• wolco 6y ago
  Bank limit transfer over 10k. There are additional benefits.
• zelly 6y ago
  Bitcoin's strong point is that it will allow rich people to maintain their wealth when the inevtiable tyrants take over and try to redistribute wealth.