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I am surprised that there is no mention of Bitcoin. My current project is also in another country (US) and I live in Europe. I am getting paid in BTC, and I pay

I am surprised that there is no mention of Bitcoin. My current project is also in another country (US) and I live in Europe. I am getting paid in BTC, and I pay even less then via Transferwise. It is cheaper because the company already owns Bitcoin, so it doesn't need to buy them. What I do is: - Getting BTC transferred to a wallet at an exchange I trust - Sell the BTC ones I receive them and put the money on my bank account I switch between using Transferwise and BTC. The downsides are obviously that the price can fluctuate quite heavily. But my experience is that I saved a few hundred Euros each year (around 450 Euros) from using BTC instead of Transferwise. That's not a lot in the grand scheme of things. What I like about a BTC transaction is that I can monitor it, it is even more transparent then Transferwise and I truly "own" the BTC ones sent. It is a bit sad that I can't use it as much as I would like so I sell around 90% immediately to pay rent, buy stocks etc, and 10% stay there for future gains.

Ayesh 6y ago
I'm genuinely looking forward to a day that we can do this. Digitally transfer money between each other. Right now, you are probably losing more money that Ttansferwise because it costs a considerable amount of money to convert them to Fiat currency.
- tradertef 6y ago
  Agree. Also, you loose money when you buy it. P2P transfer is extremely cheap, but on-ramp and off-ramp are horrible. That's why there are so many exchanges making money in Bitcoin business.
pal_9000 6y ago
I believe fiat withdrawal fees / trading are a lot higher than transferwise fee, at least in my case. Which exchange do you use if I may ask?
- sambarina 6y ago
  I personally use Kraken. Deposit money is sometimes within the same day, and selling was never a problem: https://www.kraken.com/features/fee-schedule https://www.kraken.com/features/fee-schedule I am not tight to them, but for me it's the less concerning option.
cik 6y ago
This has always been more of the dream of BTC than the reality. Transferring BTC around can cost 0.1 - 0.4% which becomes quite expensive. The cost of a wire transfer from Canada to the various countries I make them is a flat $36 - though receiving fees can be as high as $15 (CAD). That means that BTC only makes sense if you're transferring less than $5100. But moreover, BTC back to fiat is significantly more expensive than "expensive" currency exchange with usually levels as high as 3%
- decentralised 6y ago
  The costs for transactions are not fixed to a percentage of the total amount sent but on the size of the transaction and the network congestion. Moving one billion USD worth of BTC can cost as little as 0.065 BTC or ~440 USD. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/bitcoin-mystery-trade-cryptocurrency-market-transaction-blockchain-a9103611.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/ne... https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/4410c8d14ff9f87ceeed1d65cb58e7c7b2422b2d7529afc675208ce2ce09ed7d https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/4410c8d14ff9f87ceeed1d65cb...
  - JumpCrisscross 6y ago
    > Moving one billion USD worth of BTC can cost as little as 0.065 BTC or ~440 USD Which is ridiculous, given anyone (legally) moving a billion dollars pays zero for an instantaneous Fedwire.
    - decentralised 6y ago
      Not familiar with Fedwire. Surely it won't be free to move fiat via any payment network. Do you happen to have a source? PS: seems not to be available to retail customers?
      - fennecfoxen 6y ago
        The "Fedwire Funds Service" is the Federal Reserve's wire transfer payment system used to move USD. I'm actually writing an integration to it right this moment (the old fixed-width format, not the new XML one, yay). Naturally this interface is not available directly to retail customers, but if you actually send a wire transfer from your bank, this is the system you will use. Your bank will generally make this available to you through some online interface. If not, you can visit the teller. They will likely charge you $20-$40 to send a wire if you are a small account, but, even with something like Chase's mid-level "Signature" checking (~$10-$20k minimum to avoid monthly fees iirc) they will waive this fee. And, of course, if you're really moving a billion, not only would you have a banking relationship where your wire fees are waived, that fee would be peanuts anyway.
Scoundreller 6y ago
> Getting BTC transferred to a wallet at an exchange I trust This has never been a good idea, unless you’ve been immediately selling upon receipt.
- ad31mar 6y ago
  > This has never been a good idea, unless you’ve been immediately selling upon receipt. It evens out over time.
- ShorsHammer 6y ago
  Do most people not expect to spend the money eventually? What else are you going to do with it? Unless you are getting international transfers for the purpose of buying drugs or speculating/trading I completely disagree with this. Have taken payment for consulting in BTC a few times and would always get it into a local exchange then sell/transfer out within an hour, it's pretty painless when you are all setup with the exchange, fee's on my end come to 0.8% total amount, not capped. So $80 for a $10k payment in BTC, that's not including the senders fees, exchange movements and time spent. Looking at transferwise now they will do the same $10K from USD to AUD for $80.60
  - sambarina 6y ago
    My point with Transferwise is also: They are not really transferring money. Whereas with BTC, you have a transaction. With Transferwise, they sum up all their transactions and do larger bulk transactions at the end of each month or quarter or whatever. So with using BTC, you actually have the BTC when it is transferred. The banking system has to cheat itself to keep low fees and fast transaction times. With BTC, you may wait 10-15 minutes. With Fiat, you would usually wait a day or two. But, you can "cheat" your way through the system. One way I don't get why people won't support BTC: It is a system where everyone can contribute, see every transaction and improve it. The banking system however is old, slow and deeply flawed. And there is no way of improving it. So yeah, even if BTC would be more expensive and slow, I would still use it more often then not, since it's software, and you can fix and improve software.
xii22 6y ago
Personally I use Bitcoin to transfer money to my home country monthly. It's not much, around 1000-1500 euro (hopefully for just one more month), and it's to pay my credit card debt back home. It's very convenient, fast, and I get the best market price for my euros. Using Transferwise is out of the question since my homeland uses an artificial price for the dollar, and thus if I were to use them I'd lose on about 25% of my country's currency.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- renewiltord 6y ago
  If $1 = 100 Homeland units through Bitcoin but only 75 Homeland units through currency conversion. Why don't you move 1000 dollars over and bring back $1333.33 and repeat?
  - novok 6y ago
    It's probably done by government fiat and transferring homeland units to usd probably has a similar penalty to prevent such arbitrage.
    - xii22 6y ago
      Correct! Very surprised you got it! To elaborate, there is a tax on buying dollars, so although the 'official' price is X, the true price is X + 30% if you want to buy. I think there might be a possibility for arbitrage eventually, since sometimes the true price is lower than the price you might get for bitcoin but the difference is so minuscule that it would take years to make an interesting profit out of it. Also, it would be a pain in the ass to wire the transfer out of the country, since for example Transferwise doesn't allow you to send money in my homeland's currency, only receive.
beefield 6y ago
> It is cheaper ... I sell around 90% immediately Sorry, i am unconviced. Could you show the numbers including all costs and exposure times to fx risks from your client's BTC account to your landlords bank account and compare those to using e.g. Transferwise?
cdiddy2 6y ago
If you immediately sell 90% of it you may be better off getting USDC (or Euro equivalent) and buying bitcoin with the 10% so you dont have to sell such a large amount since fees in crypto are usually percentage based.
solotronics 6y ago
The cool thing to me about Bitcoin is the setup for someone new who is unbanked is really quick. You can have someone in Zimbabwe with nothing but a cellphone download an open source Bitcoin wallet and send them money in 10 minutes. They can take this and withdraw cash from and ATM or use Bitcoin and you don't have to go through all the friction of international payments and banking. Since it works with pub/priv key cryptography its a push model and so you can securely send money to anyone, anywhere, anytime. No bank needed.

Ayesh 6y ago

I'm genuinely looking forward to a day that we can do this. Digitally transfer money between each other. Right now, you are probably losing more money that Ttansferwise because it costs a considerable amount of money to convert them to Fiat currency.

tradertef 6y ago
Agree. Also, you loose money when you buy it. P2P transfer is extremely cheap, but on-ramp and off-ramp are horrible. That's why there are so many exchanges making money in Bitcoin business.

pal_9000 6y ago

I believe fiat withdrawal fees / trading are a lot higher than transferwise fee, at least in my case. Which exchange do you use if I may ask?

sambarina 6y ago
I personally use Kraken. Deposit money is sometimes within the same day, and selling was never a problem: https://www.kraken.com/features/fee-schedule https://www.kraken.com/features/fee-schedule I am not tight to them, but for me it's the less concerning option.

cik 6y ago

This has always been more of the dream of BTC than the reality. Transferring BTC around can cost 0.1 - 0.4% which becomes quite expensive. The cost of a wire transfer from Canada to the various countries I make them is a flat $36 - though receiving fees can be as high as $15 (CAD). That means that BTC only makes sense if you're transferring less than $5100. But moreover, BTC back to fiat is significantly more expensive than "expensive" currency exchange with usually levels as high as 3%

decentralised 6y ago
The costs for transactions are not fixed to a percentage of the total amount sent but on the size of the transaction and the network congestion. Moving one billion USD worth of BTC can cost as little as 0.065 BTC or ~440 USD. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/bitcoin-mystery-trade-cryptocurrency-market-transaction-blockchain-a9103611.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/ne... https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/4410c8d14ff9f87ceeed1d65cb58e7c7b2422b2d7529afc675208ce2ce09ed7d https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/4410c8d14ff9f87ceeed1d65cb...
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  > Moving one billion USD worth of BTC can cost as little as 0.065 BTC or ~440 USD Which is ridiculous, given anyone (legally) moving a billion dollars pays zero for an instantaneous Fedwire.
  - decentralised 6y ago
    Not familiar with Fedwire. Surely it won't be free to move fiat via any payment network. Do you happen to have a source? PS: seems not to be available to retail customers?
    - fennecfoxen 6y ago
      The "Fedwire Funds Service" is the Federal Reserve's wire transfer payment system used to move USD. I'm actually writing an integration to it right this moment (the old fixed-width format, not the new XML one, yay). Naturally this interface is not available directly to retail customers, but if you actually send a wire transfer from your bank, this is the system you will use. Your bank will generally make this available to you through some online interface. If not, you can visit the teller. They will likely charge you $20-$40 to send a wire if you are a small account, but, even with something like Chase's mid-level "Signature" checking (~$10-$20k minimum to avoid monthly fees iirc) they will waive this fee. And, of course, if you're really moving a billion, not only would you have a banking relationship where your wire fees are waived, that fee would be peanuts anyway.

Scoundreller 6y ago

> Getting BTC transferred to a wallet at an exchange I trust This has never been a good idea, unless you’ve been immediately selling upon receipt.

ad31mar 6y ago
> This has never been a good idea, unless you’ve been immediately selling upon receipt. It evens out over time.
ShorsHammer 6y ago
Do most people not expect to spend the money eventually? What else are you going to do with it? Unless you are getting international transfers for the purpose of buying drugs or speculating/trading I completely disagree with this. Have taken payment for consulting in BTC a few times and would always get it into a local exchange then sell/transfer out within an hour, it's pretty painless when you are all setup with the exchange, fee's on my end come to 0.8% total amount, not capped. So $80 for a $10k payment in BTC, that's not including the senders fees, exchange movements and time spent. Looking at transferwise now they will do the same $10K from USD to AUD for $80.60
- sambarina 6y ago
  My point with Transferwise is also: They are not really transferring money. Whereas with BTC, you have a transaction. With Transferwise, they sum up all their transactions and do larger bulk transactions at the end of each month or quarter or whatever. So with using BTC, you actually have the BTC when it is transferred. The banking system has to cheat itself to keep low fees and fast transaction times. With BTC, you may wait 10-15 minutes. With Fiat, you would usually wait a day or two. But, you can "cheat" your way through the system. One way I don't get why people won't support BTC: It is a system where everyone can contribute, see every transaction and improve it. The banking system however is old, slow and deeply flawed. And there is no way of improving it. So yeah, even if BTC would be more expensive and slow, I would still use it more often then not, since it's software, and you can fix and improve software.

xii22 6y ago

Personally I use Bitcoin to transfer money to my home country monthly. It's not much, around 1000-1500 euro (hopefully for just one more month), and it's to pay my credit card debt back home. It's very convenient, fast, and I get the best market price for my euros. Using Transferwise is out of the question since my homeland uses an artificial price for the dollar, and thus if I were to use them I'd lose on about 25% of my country's currency.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
renewiltord 6y ago
If $1 = 100 Homeland units through Bitcoin but only 75 Homeland units through currency conversion. Why don't you move 1000 dollars over and bring back $1333.33 and repeat?
- novok 6y ago
  It's probably done by government fiat and transferring homeland units to usd probably has a similar penalty to prevent such arbitrage.
  - xii22 6y ago
    Correct! Very surprised you got it! To elaborate, there is a tax on buying dollars, so although the 'official' price is X, the true price is X + 30% if you want to buy. I think there might be a possibility for arbitrage eventually, since sometimes the true price is lower than the price you might get for bitcoin but the difference is so minuscule that it would take years to make an interesting profit out of it. Also, it would be a pain in the ass to wire the transfer out of the country, since for example Transferwise doesn't allow you to send money in my homeland's currency, only receive.

beefield 6y ago

> It is cheaper ... I sell around 90% immediately Sorry, i am unconviced. Could you show the numbers including all costs and exposure times to fx risks from your client's BTC account to your landlords bank account and compare those to using e.g. Transferwise?

cdiddy2 6y ago

If you immediately sell 90% of it you may be better off getting USDC (or Euro equivalent) and buying bitcoin with the 10% so you dont have to sell such a large amount since fees in crypto are usually percentage based.

solotronics 6y ago

The cool thing to me about Bitcoin is the setup for someone new who is unbanked is really quick. You can have someone in Zimbabwe with nothing but a cellphone download an open source Bitcoin wallet and send them money in 10 minutes. They can take this and withdraw cash from and ATM or use Bitcoin and you don't have to go through all the friction of international payments and banking. Since it works with pub/priv key cryptography its a push model and so you can securely send money to anyone, anywhere, anytime. No bank needed.