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Comment by ebikelaw | Hacker News Reader

Why not just dollars?

How would you send him/her dollars?

Venezuelans cannot accept USD without a bank account. You can use paypal but its hard to exchange from paypal USD to the venezuelan currency (Bolivares)

How, and why is it easier to exchange BTC for Bolivars, then Paypal dollars for Bolivars?

can't imagine it's easy to exchange bitcoins to bolivars, though I may be wrong if course

Why not exchange bitcoins for stuff, like an actual currency and not just a method of transfer?

Are the transaction fees still ridiculous and is it any faster? I thought it's generally too expensive or slow for most normal transactions

No, at the moment the fees are quite low.

Maybe you could trust the person asking for crypto instead of showing an anti-crypto bias?

Coin Metrics says the transaction fee stands at $7.67 which is astronomical. ETH is a bit lower at $1.39 but that is still far far higher than most payment instruments.

Check western union.

I'm not sure where you are getting those figures from, Coin Metrics shows fees under $1 for both for me [0]. The two sites I've used in the past that have been pretty accurate show ~$0.10 for both [1] [2].

[0] https://coinmetrics.io/charts/#assets=btc,eth_left=averageFe...

[1] https://ethgasstation.info/index.php

[2] https://bitcoinfees.info/

I don't use BTC much these days, but if you're paying $1.39 for an ETH transaction you're most certainly paying too much.

The StdCost right now is a dime. You can get away with less if you're willing to wait for confirmation (which is possible if you're transacting locally with neighbors).

https://ethgasstation.info/

https://ethgasstation.info/ shows $0.092 (3 minutes) for an eth transfer and https://bitcoinfees.info/ shows $0.13 for a bitcoin transaction in the next block (10 minutes)

I have a feeling what you're looking at is old data? Transfers are cheap right now

That's what I am getting at. To pervert the old saying, you can't eat a Bitcoin. Presumably what this person wants is some instrument that can be exchanged for, say, 50 kilos of rice. Are Bitcoin and Ethereum really the best such instruments within Venezuela?

I thought holding USD was outlawed in Venezuela now?

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