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If you're wondering how you should do these types of transactions without putting cash up front, the field is called trade finance. Call your bank - most of th
by nikcub 12y ago
If you're wondering how you should do these types of transactions without putting cash up front, the field is called trade finance.
Call your bank - most of them have a trade finance desk, or Google the term. A slightly cheaper way of doing it is to have a lawyer draft a terms of trade or supply agreement with either the funds in escrow with the firm or a bank guarantee.
Having your bank finance the trade is worthwhile as interest rates are so low at the moment. Common terms are 60, 90 or 120 day delivery with FED/LIBOR + x% (where x is the risk profile of your business - shop around to get prices) cost over the term.
The agreement would contain delivery timetables, warranties, customs clearance, liabilities, indemnities, guarantees, who pays what, etc. and you are protected legally without handing over tens of thousands of dollars or more upfront. These contracts are protected by law in almost all jurisdictions.
You don't finalize the transaction and pay for it until all conditions have been met and you have the goods in hand and have verified. The seller is trusting an international bank or a law firm escrow, and they should also have a lawyer or bank on their end (a trusted seller can receive the cash upfront for a fee with the bank picking up the risk, although I doubt any bank would finance a bitcoin atm without verified trade volume and a lower risk profile).
Talk to your lawyer and talk to your bank, having expensive items delivered without risking the full cost is a solved problem as old as finance itself and trillions of dollars annually are traded in this way. The extra $1k or so you'd pay on a $25k deal are worth it for the guarantee. If you ship goods regularly the costs are amortized as you can use the same contracts and finance suppliers. Don't deal with anybody shipping $20k+ valued products that doesn't deal with a bank trade finance desk or law firm and is instead asking for a bank transfer.
This is how most high cost goods are traded - from oil and other commodity supply contracts through to companies like Boeing and Airbus supplying planes, or GE supplying turbines for a power plant. Most people without experience lead into it thinking that buying something that costs $25k, $100k or millions of dollars is just the same as purchasing something at your local store just with bigger numbers. It isn't.
Bitcoin multisig transactions, or m of n transactions are also worth investigating as they cut the costs - although there is currently a lack of escrow/intermediaries who are as trusted as major law firms or an international bank. There is a huge opportunity in cutting the costs and fees associated with trade finance with bitcoin.
- wsxcde 12y ago>There is a huge opportunity in cutting the costs and fees associated with trade finance with bitcoin. Why is there an opportunity with bitcoin? Aren't the costs and fees paying for the legal agreements, risk management, arbitration and things like that? Bitcoin might possibly reduce the cost of moving the dollars around but I suspect this is a very small fraction of the cost of this type of service.
- klon 12y agoNot to mention the fx risk involved.
- nikcub 12y agoTrade finance isn't a transparent market. The costs are higher because the way it works atm is you work with your favorite bank or call 2 or 3 others. There is no real price discovery. There are also high costs in settlement, and a barrier of entry for financing that wouldn't have to exist if you could sell tranches in a distributed way online - similar to kickstarter. An m-of-n transaction with a decent and trusted intermediary (or multiple less trusted intermediaries) could also replace bank guarantees, which is the simplest form of trade finance. There are also other opportunities in using bitcoin as proof of ownership or proof that you hold a product.
- cube13 12y ago>An m-of-n transaction with a decent and trusted intermediary (or multiple less trusted intermediaries) could also replace bank guarantees, which is the simplest form of trade finance. There are also other opportunities in using bitcoin as proof of ownership or proof that you hold a product. So let's replace banks with... banks? The overhead costs that bitcoin will save are just the wire transfer fees. Beyond that, there's still lawyer time, intermediary escrow fees, etc. Those will not change.
- nikcub 12y agoYou would replace a bank with coinbase, circle, someone else you trust or 2, 3, 4, 5 or even 10 other companies or individuals. Similar to a web of trust. That is just to replace the trust element of a bank, not the financial function. At the moment it is nearly impossible to split trust across more than one institution - which means there is a single point of failure in the trust chain and if 2008 repeats again x% of people will lose funds. m-of-n allows you to distribute that trust, even if its just more banks signing the transactions to begin with. Further, there are other ways to do proof of reserve with bitcoin that don't involve m-of-n. In terms of the financing and risk assessment element, you could carve that out in tranches and sell out it on auction. At the moment the $2 trillion p.a trade finance market is limited in entry to only those who have a banking license, hence the thick fees and profits in it. You could open up the financing and terms to an open market, just like crowdsourced venture funding or project funding, or have smaller institutions that specialize in certain types of risk that they better understand (it is crazy that there are a half-dozen major banks who pretend to be able to understand and price every time of import / export finance situation anywhere in the world).