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Recently on Odd Lots, SBF offered to race to transfer $100,000 to the person sitting at the next desk over. The opponent could use tools such as wire transfers

Recently on Odd Lots, SBF offered to race to transfer $100,000 to the person sitting at the next desk over. The opponent could use tools such as wire transfers or checks or walking to a bank to ask to withdraw 1,000 $100 bills to send dollars, and SBF would use USDC. The person whose recipient receives the $100,000 earlier would win the race. A variation of this exercise where the money must be sent to someone in a foreign country was also proposed. Is winning such races at all valuable?

RandomLensman 5y ago
Depending where you live, can do that in traditional banking mobile phone apps pretty fast. The instant transfers with the European SEPA are up to €100k, I think, and they need maybe a few seconds (max. 10s AFAIK). Not sure what the use cases for high frequency cash transfer in sub second space are.
- anonymoushn 5y ago
  Unfortunately the podcast was recorded in the US. For people sending money domestically in the US, like SBF was proposing, it's more likely to be 1-2 business days of latency (so add 2-3 days to that if you happen to try to send it on the last weekday of the week, naturally) and consumer banks commonly prevent such transactions from occurring at all. For example they may impose much smaller limits on the daily amount transferred, so the client must make phone calls and pay fees on many different business days. The situation is a bit worse for US people living outside the US. My baseline experience for cash transfers between my own accounts involves about 1 week of latency and some phone calls at like 2 in the morning :)
  - RandomLensman 5y ago
    US banking/payment system just seems so broken from across the pond... Account to account transfers are just super normal where I live (not always using the instant method, because no need...). There are usually lower limits on daily transfer here as well, but you can change them. I think €100k is more a system limit, but I might be wrong.

RandomLensman 5y ago

Depending where you live, can do that in traditional banking mobile phone apps pretty fast. The instant transfers with the European SEPA are up to €100k, I think, and they need maybe a few seconds (max. 10s AFAIK). Not sure what the use cases for high frequency cash transfer in sub second space are.

anonymoushn 5y ago
Unfortunately the podcast was recorded in the US. For people sending money domestically in the US, like SBF was proposing, it's more likely to be 1-2 business days of latency (so add 2-3 days to that if you happen to try to send it on the last weekday of the week, naturally) and consumer banks commonly prevent such transactions from occurring at all. For example they may impose much smaller limits on the daily amount transferred, so the client must make phone calls and pay fees on many different business days. The situation is a bit worse for US people living outside the US. My baseline experience for cash transfers between my own accounts involves about 1 week of latency and some phone calls at like 2 in the morning :)
- RandomLensman 5y ago
  US banking/payment system just seems so broken from across the pond... Account to account transfers are just super normal where I live (not always using the instant method, because no need...). There are usually lower limits on daily transfer here as well, but you can change them. I think €100k is more a system limit, but I might be wrong.