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Comment by isostatic | Hacker News Reader

> how expensive it would be to do it in a normal banking situation

No idea about the billionaires, but I can shift £5k from a current account to another current account with another bank for the princely sum of £0.00

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Try doing 100K in EUR/USD/GBP...

It's likely not free (but probably not outrageous either)... Last time I did something like that the transaction cost was small (< €10) but the human element was large due to approvals (think i was in the bank over an hour and it involved 4-5 bank staff to make it happen). Anti-money laundering processes cost money and many of the crypto-currencies ignore this for now / pass the problem to the fiat ⇆ crypto exchange operators.

On the flip side, I saw a payment go through for one our suppliers today. $50 invoice. > $25 processing fee because it was a european bank processing a USD transaction. :/

I can transfer 100k in GBP free too. BACS limit is £250k. Once I exceed that I have to fall to CHAPs which will cost me about £25 and has no limit. Banking is mostly free in the UK.

Bacs limit is £20 million per item but is 3 day clearing. The £250k limit is FPS (instant clearing) I believe, or your bank.

You're correct, sorry. AIUI there's a higher limit for corps/govs too. Banks often have lower limits than these but I've no doubt they'll lift them if there's need.

For those not familiar, FPS offers 2h (normally instant) transaction speed.

Having bank transfers in 2019 so slow is outrageous. It's the time when trading bots produce millions in a split second. But bank transactions require hours and days. And they dare to call them fast!

the orders might only take a few ms from creation to execution, but the settlement still takes time (hours to days)

Eh, when does it really matter? The only time I care about speed is when buying something, and the more expensive that something is, the less fast it needs to be.

If you have a truck waiting to load at a warehouse somewhere waiting for your £200k payment to clear, then yes, the speed really really matters.

Same goes for aircraft. Good luck chartering an airliner at short notice without making a large deposit.

2h is quick. In EU sometimes it can take days.

€100k is in fact the limit on the web form for my bank, so at least if that UI is to be believed, it's not substantially more involved than €5k (I don't have personal experience to confirm however).

You can transfer 100k Euros for free within SEPA. Probably more.

And £250k with BACS (GBP/UK).

I just recently transferred a similar sum for the grand total of $0. (Actually I gained about a dollar because the banks made initial deposits for me with their own money to make sure the accounts were correct)

Most I’ve ever transferred is about 600.000 USD. Was free and instant..

> Anti-money laundering processes cost money and many of the crypto-currencies ignore this for now / pass the problem to the fiat ⇆ crypto exchange operators.

As I understood, traceability is included by-design in Bitcoin. Maybe you didn't see the other comments, but all the bitcoins of this wallet can be traced back to one or several entities. All history of all transactions is available to everyone, so could you explain what do you mean by "ignored"?

Not if they used a tumbler for years to accrue that sum

The they likely would have lost enormous amounts in tumbling fees.

Not if they own the tumbler. In fact, it would make a lot of sense if this was some tumbler or online gambling site owner.

I doubt if you ran a tumbler you would choose to execute this transaction.

ACH transfers are generally free. I transferred 100k USD from bank A, in to bank B, then out to bank C and it didn't cost me a penny. This was quicker than setting up a link from A to C since B was already linked to the others.

Due to the size of the relevant column in the fixed-width format files used for ACH, there is a limit of $99,999,999.99 for ACH transactions.

People do this all the time, and it's not expensive at all. You can do wire transfers of hundreds of thousands of dollars for a $20 fee. You can get certified checks from your bank for large amounts for free.

you can wire billions for a 20$ (or less) fee.

Not if you care about the government getting some of it

Bitcoin to bitcoin might be cheap, but the crypto exchanges seems to take quite a cut when you convert to national currency. Something like 1.5% in the case of Coinbase.

coinbase is far too expensive with their normal options. if you use their coinbase pro product it comes down to .3% for taker transactions or .15% for maker transactions. I never use the regular coinbase

> It's likely not free

I can wire hundreds of thousands of dollars from and into my consumer banking account for free. At work, multi-million dollar wires transfer for free, with an email confirmation and virtually instantly.

Cryptocurrencies are cheaper if you're laundering money or move money around too infrequently to bother optimizing for it.

I can toss a nickel at my friend for free.

What this misses is that these transactions for better or for worse are completely non reversible. You simply cannot do that with a bank transfer as given a good cause transactions can always be delayed, diverted or stopped.

You’re thinking of bitcoin. I’ve reversed bank transactions before.

And just today https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-49643015

Are you talking about wire transfers? In the US both banks would charge a transaction fee.

Probably, it's the same in The Netherlands, wire transfers are instantaneous and free.

Normal ACH (Automated Clearing House) transactions in the US tend to be free. I can move money from one bank to another bank without any fees. It usually takes anywhere from 1-4 days. This is moving US dollars. Not sure what the cheapest way to move USD to EUR is and likely not free.

Depends on the bank. Wells Fargo nickels and dimes you on this kind of stuff for instance.

SEPA has a fee of 41 euro cents.

SEPA has a fee of "the same as a national transaction within your country", so in many countries it's free.

This is largely dependent on your account type and bank. There are many types of accounts that will not charge for wires or will only charge on one side (incoming/outgoing) of the transaction.

I don't pay outgoing wire transfer fees on my business account.

And there’s the nub, elsewhere in the world we don’t have that, and we don’t typically have bank fees - on the contrary the banks pay us.

Great. Now trying doing a billion. There are limits.

You get paid to transfer a billion. The internet alone is measured in hundreds a minute.

It’s rather moot as people and companies don’t keep a billion sitting in the same bank account.

but with bitcoin it's borderless. there are no free int'l wire services.

There are in Europe in the euro zone.

ok.. the euro zone also has borders.

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