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$38M USD moved for half a penny
- Tenoke 6y agoThis is cool but it's hard to see how using a fork of BTC, even if it's optimized for les fees currently, is the best option for pure transactions. It still uses Proof of Work, no matter how you stuff the blocks and better (to my eyes) alternatives already exist like Nano which is feeless, even faster and doesn't waste energy.
- capableweb 6y agoOverall I agree with you, but what bothers me is that people continue to say that PoW is waste of energy, even if the article is about moving 38M USD for 0.0064 USD. How does that make sense if it's actually doing something useful? Or you think in general moving money around is not useful?
- Tenoke 6y agoI think it's useful. I just think that it's comparably less useful than doing it in a way that costs less energy like in Nano's (and others) case.
- capableweb 6y agoSo you think the drawbacks of Nano are not impacting it's usefulness compared to Bitcoin? Last time I checked, Nano didn't have any trustless lightweight wallets, you can't attach any data to transactions and also no multisig.
- xtracto 6y ago>Nano which is feeless, even faster and doesn't waste energy. Suddenly the internet is getting filled by shilling of this thing.
- Tenoke 6y agoThere's a lot of comments about it online now, yes, but it's pretty relevant when talking about alternatives in a thread about the cost of a big BCH transaction. This isn't shilling.
- statstutor 6y agoForgive my ignorance, but wouldn't it be free to just hand over the wallet?
- jtvjan 6y agoThen you'd have to trust that the original owner destroys their copy.
- Tenoke 6y agoSure, if you want to give them the exact amount you currently hold and you don't need the wallet for anything else, and the buyer is fine having no guarantees that the original owner cant still access them.
- sedeki 6y agoWell, would you trust that the original owner erased his/her private keys and not made a copy?
- cuchoi 6y agoDoes it make sense to use BTC (or another crypto) to wire money internationally? I assume that there are fees for transforming USD to BTC and BTC to local currency, but are those higher than Transferwise or doing a traditional bank wire transfer? Is there a service that wires money and uses crypto as a backend?
- sedeki 6y agoExactly. These type of posts and comments ignore the fact that the actual transaction costs involved are higher, perhaps even much higher.
- Tenoke 6y agoDepositing and converting that amount to Binance will cost you 0.02% in fees, and same to convert on the other end (assuming there's buyers for such an amount). Of course, that's assuming you are going from/to cash rather than keeping them in crypto.
- sedeki 6y agoSo $7600 (plus half a penny) in transaction fees on $38M. How much would a bank charge for wiring that amount?
- Symbiote 6y agoUp to $50 for a SWIFT transaction, without currency conversion. There's likely to be a similar charge for making a transfer that large from a bank to a Bitcoin exchange anyway.
- tor12 6y agoyou are mixing exchange rate premiums and transaction fees. imagine 30M or so EUR to USD first then transaction fee. most certainly more.
- Tenoke 6y agoIt depends. The fees for international wire transfers of those amounts are more complex. A random calculator I found suggested much, much more. Transferwise (cheapest I know) doesn't do that large transfers so you'll have to do it in ~100 transactions but the fees will be a lot larger, and this does not account for conversion fees which will be higher on their own. I found this for GBP, I assume it's similar. >For payments in GBP the fee percentage for the first 100,000 is 0.35%, and for any amount above that it’s only 0.20%. https://transferwise.com/gb/blog/send-large-sum-of-money-how https://transferwise.com/gb/blog/send-large-sum-of-money-how
- joosters 6y agoIt’s telling that the amount is always specified in dollars, because that’s the stuff that actually people want and use. And if you wanted to convert it to usable dollars, it would cost thousands of times more.
- zpeti 6y agoHenry Ford also thought it was telling that people wanted faster horses right?
- _iswk 6y agoAgain, and I hate to keep repeating myself, but this is not true and just shows that people are not doing their research and/or they're stuck in 2016. Strike (https://global.strike.me https://global.strike.me) has built a product in which they use Bitcoin and the Lightning Network to send money (fiat currency like USD, EUR, etc.) around the world instantaneously and at virtually no cost. In some cases, they are able to offer exchange rates that are better than the inter-bank FX rate. Explanation of how it works: https://jimmymow.medium.com/announcing-strike-global-2392b908f611 https://jimmymow.medium.com/announcing-strike-global-2392b90...
- _delibash_ 6y agoThere's always a cost. Even if you do not see it in the numbers.
- _iswk 6y agoNo doubt. But that also applies to the legacy financial system. It's just much more difficult to calculate.
- xtracto 6y agoI think in the case of crypto the cost is the volatility of the coins against the dollar . So that if you wanted to do something with those 64 usd you may end up with 1 million less by the time you exchange it due to volatility and slippage.
- 6y ago
- asdev 6y agoShows the power of crypto. Except don't use unsupported crappy forks. Gotta use the original.
- jbirer 6y agoBut they are using the original Bitcoin, not the Lightning Network altcoin.
- superbcarrot 6y agoYou can't do the same low-cost transfer with the original though.
- asdev 6y agohttps://mashable.com/article/bitcoin-1-1-billion-transaction/ https://mashable.com/article/bitcoin-1-1-billion-transaction... 1B moved for $80 fee. Do your research.
- superbcarrot 6y agoI don't see how this proves anything, on a linear scale it's still much more expensive than BCH fees.
- theklub 6y ago“Moved”. Nothing moved, numbers changed in a database.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- rahulmittal79 6y agoI agree with you, but what bothers me is that people continue to say that PoW is waste of energy, even if the article is about moving 38M USD for 0.0064 USD.
- gambiting 6y agoIt didn't though. It moved bitcoin which is worth 38M USD, but crucially it's not the same thing. If you wanted to convert that bitcoin to actual dollars it would cost you a lot more. Like, if you had a painting worth 38M dollars you could just throw it in the car and drive it somewhere and give it to someone. You just "moved" 38M dollars, but I hope it's clear that it's not the same as actually sending 38M dollars.
- londons_explore 6y agoThe PoW energy is paid for via mining rewards, which are minting new coins (inflation). The inflation rate in bitcoin is about 2% right now. That means your wallets real world value is shrinking by about 2% annually to pay for those miners. So far, thats been dwarfed by other reasons for bitcoin to change in value.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- nobrains 6y agoThat doesn't mean anything. The true cost is when the network is saturated. You can also have this same fee in BTC. If there are no competing transactions, this fee transaction will be mined.
- wcoenen 6y agoThe number of transactions per day on Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash appears to be roughly the same: https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/transactions-btc-bch.html https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/transactions-btc-bch.ht...
- mgh2 6y agoNote: The poster has been promoting Bitcoin and joined HN after covid
- simonjgreen 6y agoWhat's the relevance?
- mgh2 6y agoIt is biased towards promotional material. We need more substantial proof
- capableweb 6y agoWhile you're possibly right, it feels more than boring to note the posters history rather than arguing against the arguments themselves. Also not sure how the time when someone created an account is relevant, who knows for how long the author been around HN in reality?
- hggh 6y ago> who knows for how long the author been around HN in reality Exactly, even I don't remember, since the early days for sure.
- hggh 6y agoJust to give credit, the title is not mine but Roger Ver's: https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/ltc9g9/38m_usd_moved_for_half_a_penny/ https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/ltc9g9/38m_usd_moved_f...
- Proven 6y agoEveryone knows tx fees are unrelated to what's being moved. If they sent half a penny, they'd also have to pay (at least) half a penny.
- rahulmittal79 6y agoThere's a lot of comments about it online now, yes, but it's pretty relevant when talking about alternatives in a thread about the cost of a big BCH transaction. This isn't shilling https://get-mxplayer.in https://get-mxplayer.in