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Comment by cik | Hacker News Reader

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%

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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/ne...

https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/4410c8d14ff9f87ceeed1d65cb...

> 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.

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?

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.

Im in the EU and we don't have Fedwire here. I can tell you that ABN AMRO charges me ~10 euros for transferring ~200 eur to the UK (with conversion to GBP).

Generally speaking I'm quite familiar with payment infra in Europe, I've worked on it for ~20 years after all.

I am not sure how to engage with this reply. It is of course unsurprising that European banks do not have integrations with the Federal Reserve for moving USD. European banks often have access to international systems like SWIFT and SEPA, and various national payments systems, instead.

I have precious little information to offer you on the workings of European funds transfer services, however; I posted here to discuss Fedwire specifically, since you brought it up.

Well, first of all thank you for your earlier comment.

My anxiety is peaking lately... I have no idea exactly why I answered like that but what I meant was that while I'm not familiar with the US payment system, I do know the European one quite well and that's why earlier I'd expressed incredulity that any traditional banking system could offer zero cost transfers. I think I didn't notice you were not JumpCrisscross

If you want to convert between money, it's slight more expensive but marginally so (15k USD for converting 1B with IB, 8k if you change more than 5B per month)

I'd like to note that they overpaid ridiculously on that fee, they probably just didn't care about the fee since it was a rounding error.

Even $15 would have been too much, looking at other transactions in the block.

See, I did the calculations and it was cheaper to use BTC then to use Transferwise. BTC also worked faster for me then transferwise.

Of course, you already need to own Bitcoin. If not, the fees are slightly more expensive, but still cheaper then using "normal Banks".

Another factor with BTC is. If you receive the money in BTC and the exchange course happens to be relatively stable. Depending on your country, you will have a hard time converting this into your currency.

At a certain amount exchanges will ask a lot of questions (at least in Europe they do). And they want to see proof for the whole chain back, so you better hope your client can provide these infos as well.

And even if everything is 100% legit, you will wait a while for your money.

Not if you use something like Bisq to exchange BTC for fiat.

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