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Comment by skydv | Hacker News Reader

>The main attraction in bitcoin is the ability to transfer money without any restrictions

yeah just pay 30$ per transaction and wait few days

TBF the current state of Bitcoin is on par with what banks have always been offering for international transfers. So, it still has the use case of sending unrestricted amounts of money to a peer abroad.

However, I agree on the general sentiment. Transactions are more expensive than they should be.

That depends on what the network is for: transactional currency, settlement, something else...?

> with what banks in the US have always been offering

FTFY

And even with the likes of Transferwise, it's cheaper even using "traditional banking"

- I am not american. I used international transfers with french, british, japanese and korean banks, and there always was either a fee of 30~50$, or an awful sub-market exchange rate.

- TransferWise is not universal and does not work for many currencies, including the Chinese Yuan and the Indian Rupee.

TransferWise can send rupees to Indian bank accounts and I am assuming the reason they cannot take money out of India is because of Indian Govt forex regulations.

And there's the next massive bitcoin advantage : you can bypass financial regulations for normal people.

"Somehow" these rich bankers and regulators (mostly ex-bankers of course) do not see the need for poor people to be able to transact either internationally, or in some countries, at all (in anything but cash, and thus very short distance only).

With bitcoin it's 30$, but there's no percentual charge (in fact the exchange rate is often better than market for BOTH participants because bitcoin is rising in value)

> because bitcoin is rising in value

and what happens when it drops in value, the poor guy lost money

Whereas if you use a bank transfer, a 3% drop is the base cost on every single transfer. Bitcoin is volatile, but you'd very rarely have costs that high, and as I stated before, usually the cost would be negative.

Thanks for clarifying (and I agree with the exchange rate complaints)

China and India have strong currency controls in place so your problem might not be solvable by other providers

Have you tried Xe?

Wires cost $25 for me for any amount, and clear within 4 hours.

The crazy thing is that at this point in time, Banks are actually faster and cheaper than Bitcoin.

And I'm risk adverse, I'll trade "decentralization" for "your money is literally guaranteed by the government" any day.

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