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My friend's family lives in Bosnia. He lives in the United States. He supports his family with his income, and frequently sends money from the United States to

My friend's family lives in Bosnia. He lives in the United States. He supports his family with his income, and frequently sends money from the United States to Bosnia. Best case scenario, using Paypal (Xoom), a centralized company, this takes him two days. Two days is the best case scenario! With Bitcoin it is almost instant. They switched to cryptocurrency after a near disastrous situation with the length of time the transfer took. How is Bitcoin less efficient here? Sure, it's one use case, but just because something doesn't benefit you does not mean it's not beneficial for anyone.

arcticbull 5y ago
His best case scenario is opening a Wise multi-currency account, with supporting instant transfers free of charge in many cases. Bitcoin is not accepted anywhere, practically speaking. As such you're only looking at a small fraction of the transaction. You actually need to (1) transfer money into a crypto exchange for a 1-2% fee and whatever delay the domestic transfer takes (2) purchase Bitcoin for whatever fee the exchange charges (3) transfer it for $0.50-50 depending on the fee du jour (4) hope the market doesn't collapse out from under you while all this is happening (5) sell it at the destination unregulated exchange for whatever fee they charge and hope they don't flee with your money (6) transfer to the destination bank account, waiting as long as a domestic transfer takes. This is probably a few days total, with severe counter-party risk, forex risk, and substantial transaction fees. Or you can use Wise for a very low fee directly bank-to-bank, or open a Wise multi-currency account and support almost-free instant transactions. They're also super, duper regulated by a number of world regulators. I know which I'd do, but to each their own.
- mrep 5y ago
  Yeah, usehackernews@ can you detail which exchanges he is using on both ends because I'm guessing your standard ACH transfer to an exchange to make the initial USD->Bitcoin transfer would probably make the supposed time speedup moot.

arcticbull 5y ago

His best case scenario is opening a Wise multi-currency account, with supporting instant transfers free of charge in many cases. Bitcoin is not accepted anywhere, practically speaking. As such you're only looking at a small fraction of the transaction. You actually need to (1) transfer money into a crypto exchange for a 1-2% fee and whatever delay the domestic transfer takes (2) purchase Bitcoin for whatever fee the exchange charges (3) transfer it for $0.50-50 depending on the fee du jour (4) hope the market doesn't collapse out from under you while all this is happening (5) sell it at the destination unregulated exchange for whatever fee they charge and hope they don't flee with your money (6) transfer to the destination bank account, waiting as long as a domestic transfer takes. This is probably a few days total, with severe counter-party risk, forex risk, and substantial transaction fees. Or you can use Wise for a very low fee directly bank-to-bank, or open a Wise multi-currency account and support almost-free instant transactions. They're also super, duper regulated by a number of world regulators. I know which I'd do, but to each their own.

mrep 5y ago
Yeah, usehackernews@ can you detail which exchanges he is using on both ends because I'm guessing your standard ACH transfer to an exchange to make the initial USD->Bitcoin transfer would probably make the supposed time speedup moot.