5 ms·

International remittances in seconds for less than a penny

NicoJuicy 5y ago
Lately, the average bitcoin transaction fee has fluctuated between $24 and $31, according to data provider Bitinfocharts. February 2021
- anonymoushn 5y ago
  Right. I don't recommend using Bitcoin for payments.
brabel 5y ago
I can get that with https://wise.com/ https://wise.com/ which integrates well with banks and therefore is my favourite solution for that. How does crypto compare to this?
- anonymoushn 5y ago
  Hello, that's great that your selection of countries and banks work well with Wise. For me, moving about $10,000 (the maximum allowed by Wise) from the US to Japan through Wise takes about 5 days, costs like $70, and requires me to take a phone call at 2 in the morning from my US bank.
  - NicoJuicy 5y ago
    You can up those limits. Those are typically risk factors concerning fraud. Which is a feature. And in practice your converting 10 k $ -> btc -> yen would be a lot more expensive ;). Those crypto exchanges have enormous fees too.
    - anonymoushn 5y ago
      > You can up those limits. You can't. That's a hard cap imposed by Wise for all transfers into Japan. > And in practice your converting 10 k $ -> btc -> yen would be a lot more expensive ;). Those crypto exchanges have enormous fees too. Nobody proposed using bitcoin. Maybe you mean the worst fee tiers on US exchanges like Coinbase? I pay 1.5bps taker fees and receive maker rebates at my primary exchange. My primary exchange and one of my Japanese banks also provide extremely competitive OTC forex rates which I cannot currently use because my primary exchange does not have fiat withdrawals in Japan and because Wise is not willing to send dollars to my Japanese bank (I wonder why).
      - NicoJuicy 5y ago
        Yes you can: https://wise.com/us/blog/international-wire-over-10000 https://wise.com/us/blog/international-wire-over-10000 If you want to avoid those regulations, they propose sending multiple transfers. Crypto exchanges are broader more than Bitcoin ofc.
        anonymoushn 5y ago
        Hello, you linked an article about the $10,000 threshold for IRS reporting requirements, which is unrelated to (and larger than) the 1M JPY cap Wise has historically imposed on transfers to Japan. Wise's article about this topic is here: https://wise.com/help/articles/2932156/guide-to-jpy-transfers https://wise.com/help/articles/2932156/guide-to-jpy-transfer... and currently claims that I can send larger amounts via SWIFT, so this may have just been some sort of UI issue where after saving a recipient that had all the information needed for a domestic wire but not a SWIFT code they refused to show the option for SWIFT transfers in the UI. They won't even show their UI for this stuff while you don't have a sufficiently large balance with them, so it would take me several days to check the accuracy of their article and to suss out whether my current saved recipient (myself) is only unable to receive large JPY transfers because it has no saved SWIFT code. I don't think sending larger transfers would save much on fees though. The fees paid to Wise are dominated by the percentage fees for forex conversion.
        5y ago
user-the-name 5y ago
"Less than a penny"? Absolutely not, in any way. If you want to claim this works, you will need to actually show what exact steps to take, and what fees that will cost, to transfer money into my hand. Because there are a LOT of fees in that process.
- 0x64 5y ago
  Maybe not less than a penny, but $0.20–0.35 on the cheapest Ethereum L2 rollups [1]. That'll drop by almost an order of magnitude more in the short-term if/when the calldata gas fee reduction EIP passes (could be medium-term if it doesn't get implemented before the merge). Long-term, it should drop to fractions of a cent once sharding is implemented. But, that's years away and hardly relevant. [1] https://l2fees.info/ https://l2fees.info/
  - user-the-name 5y ago
    You left out many steps there, all of which will charge you fees. Try again. Go from actual money from the sender, to actual money for the receiver. Sum up the fees.
    - 0x64 5y ago
      What steps did I skip? Some exchanges already allow withdrawals to L2s, and Coinbase is working on it. Once social recovery wallets like Argent start to onboard users directly to L2 (zkSync), L1 might as well not exist for the regular Joe since it's completely abstracted away. The situation for current L1 users is obviously different, but those people probably aren't the most fee-sensitive users anyway, since sending money with $5+ fees is hardly viable for so-called everyday use.
      - anonymoushn 5y ago
        The user you're replying to would like you to include depositing and withdrawing money at crypto exchanges, because they believe database entries at banks and PayPal are money and database entries at crypto exchanges are not.

Lately, the average bitcoin transaction fee has fluctuated between $24 and $31, according to data provider Bitinfocharts. February 2021

anonymoushn 5y ago
Right. I don't recommend using Bitcoin for payments.

brabel 5y ago

I can get that with https://wise.com/ https://wise.com/ which integrates well with banks and therefore is my favourite solution for that. How does crypto compare to this?

anonymoushn 5y ago
Hello, that's great that your selection of countries and banks work well with Wise. For me, moving about $10,000 (the maximum allowed by Wise) from the US to Japan through Wise takes about 5 days, costs like $70, and requires me to take a phone call at 2 in the morning from my US bank.
- NicoJuicy 5y ago
  You can up those limits. Those are typically risk factors concerning fraud. Which is a feature. And in practice your converting 10 k $ -> btc -> yen would be a lot more expensive ;). Those crypto exchanges have enormous fees too.
  - anonymoushn 5y ago
    > You can up those limits. You can't. That's a hard cap imposed by Wise for all transfers into Japan. > And in practice your converting 10 k $ -> btc -> yen would be a lot more expensive ;). Those crypto exchanges have enormous fees too. Nobody proposed using bitcoin. Maybe you mean the worst fee tiers on US exchanges like Coinbase? I pay 1.5bps taker fees and receive maker rebates at my primary exchange. My primary exchange and one of my Japanese banks also provide extremely competitive OTC forex rates which I cannot currently use because my primary exchange does not have fiat withdrawals in Japan and because Wise is not willing to send dollars to my Japanese bank (I wonder why).
    - NicoJuicy 5y ago
      Yes you can: https://wise.com/us/blog/international-wire-over-10000 https://wise.com/us/blog/international-wire-over-10000 If you want to avoid those regulations, they propose sending multiple transfers. Crypto exchanges are broader more than Bitcoin ofc.
      - anonymoushn 5y ago
        Hello, you linked an article about the $10,000 threshold for IRS reporting requirements, which is unrelated to (and larger than) the 1M JPY cap Wise has historically imposed on transfers to Japan. Wise's article about this topic is here: https://wise.com/help/articles/2932156/guide-to-jpy-transfers https://wise.com/help/articles/2932156/guide-to-jpy-transfer... and currently claims that I can send larger amounts via SWIFT, so this may have just been some sort of UI issue where after saving a recipient that had all the information needed for a domestic wire but not a SWIFT code they refused to show the option for SWIFT transfers in the UI. They won't even show their UI for this stuff while you don't have a sufficiently large balance with them, so it would take me several days to check the accuracy of their article and to suss out whether my current saved recipient (myself) is only unable to receive large JPY transfers because it has no saved SWIFT code. I don't think sending larger transfers would save much on fees though. The fees paid to Wise are dominated by the percentage fees for forex conversion.
        5y ago

user-the-name 5y ago

"Less than a penny"? Absolutely not, in any way. If you want to claim this works, you will need to actually show what exact steps to take, and what fees that will cost, to transfer money into my hand. Because there are a LOT of fees in that process.

0x64 5y ago
Maybe not less than a penny, but $0.20–0.35 on the cheapest Ethereum L2 rollups [1]. That'll drop by almost an order of magnitude more in the short-term if/when the calldata gas fee reduction EIP passes (could be medium-term if it doesn't get implemented before the merge). Long-term, it should drop to fractions of a cent once sharding is implemented. But, that's years away and hardly relevant. [1] https://l2fees.info/ https://l2fees.info/
- user-the-name 5y ago
  You left out many steps there, all of which will charge you fees. Try again. Go from actual money from the sender, to actual money for the receiver. Sum up the fees.
  - 0x64 5y ago
    What steps did I skip? Some exchanges already allow withdrawals to L2s, and Coinbase is working on it. Once social recovery wallets like Argent start to onboard users directly to L2 (zkSync), L1 might as well not exist for the regular Joe since it's completely abstracted away. The situation for current L1 users is obviously different, but those people probably aren't the most fee-sensitive users anyway, since sending money with $5+ fees is hardly viable for so-called everyday use.
    - anonymoushn 5y ago
      The user you're replying to would like you to include depositing and withdrawing money at crypto exchanges, because they believe database entries at banks and PayPal are money and database entries at crypto exchanges are not.