3 ms·

Digitally, without fees, with a fair exchange rate? With no limits on transaction sizes, with complete finality?

ryan_lane 4y ago
> Digitally With the exception of stores that are cash only, 100% of my money movements in the past 10 years have been digital, from my perspective. The actual money movement technology doesn't really matter to me, as long as I can do it online. Excluding settlement times (which I don't notice, unless I'm doing a wire transfer), as a consumer there's no difference. > without fees With bitcoin, you're paying fees per-transaction for bitcoin itself, and both parties are paying fees to move money to/from fiat. Wire transfers for large transfers may be slower, but they're absolutely cheaper than bitcoin. Bitcoin is considerably more expensive for small payments. > with a fair exchange rate With the fluctuations in price in bitcoin, the exchange rate is rarely fair and almost always worse than fiat. Note that there's lots of cards that don't charge foreign transaction fees, and have quite competitive exchange rates. To point it out again, using bitcoin requires two fiat exchanges, each of which charge fees and each of which has an exchange rate that the exchange is profiting from. If you're transferring fiat of the same currency, there's no fees and no exchange rate. Even if your transaction is between two fiat currencies, bitcoin is worse, because there's one extra layer of fees and exchange. > With no limits on transaction sizes I can't think of a time in which I've hit a transaction size limit. Who is this feature for? Transaction size limits exist primarily to protect people. If my card is compromised, it won't result in 100% of my money immediately (and irreversibly) being transferred away. > with complete finality This is an anti-selling point. If my money is stolen, I want to be able to get it back. If I typo an account number when I send a payment, I want to be able to reverse that payment.
merry_flame 4y ago
Have you tried Wise? I've been using the service (based in the UK, created by Skype's founders). The exchange rate is always shared upfront, extremely cheap with various options provided, many free or dirt cheap, some faster but slightly more expensive. Not too sure about the rest because my use case is very specific. Excellent for international business payments and remittances, I can assure you about that.

> Digitally With the exception of stores that are cash only, 100% of my money movements in the past 10 years have been digital, from my perspective. The actual money movement technology doesn't really matter to me, as long as I can do it online. Excluding settlement times (which I don't notice, unless I'm doing a wire transfer), as a consumer there's no difference. > without fees With bitcoin, you're paying fees per-transaction for bitcoin itself, and both parties are paying fees to move money to/from fiat. Wire transfers for large transfers may be slower, but they're absolutely cheaper than bitcoin. Bitcoin is considerably more expensive for small payments. > with a fair exchange rate With the fluctuations in price in bitcoin, the exchange rate is rarely fair and almost always worse than fiat. Note that there's lots of cards that don't charge foreign transaction fees, and have quite competitive exchange rates. To point it out again, using bitcoin requires two fiat exchanges, each of which charge fees and each of which has an exchange rate that the exchange is profiting from. If you're transferring fiat of the same currency, there's no fees and no exchange rate. Even if your transaction is between two fiat currencies, bitcoin is worse, because there's one extra layer of fees and exchange. > With no limits on transaction sizes I can't think of a time in which I've hit a transaction size limit. Who is this feature for? Transaction size limits exist primarily to protect people. If my card is compromised, it won't result in 100% of my money immediately (and irreversibly) being transferred away. > with complete finality This is an anti-selling point. If my money is stolen, I want to be able to get it back. If I typo an account number when I send a payment, I want to be able to reverse that payment.

merry_flame 4y ago

Have you tried Wise? I've been using the service (based in the UK, created by Skype's founders). The exchange rate is always shared upfront, extremely cheap with various options provided, many free or dirt cheap, some faster but slightly more expensive. Not too sure about the rest because my use case is very specific. Excellent for international business payments and remittances, I can assure you about that.