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Comment by freeplay | Hacker News Reader

Western Union is a nightmare to use. You need send and pickup in a physical location, sometimes the recipient needs specific forms of ID, and the fees are insane.

I once sent $100 to someone in South America and it cost me $13.

WU is a relic that targets and takes advantage of the less fortunate and those in 3rd world countries.

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To be fair, the current average Bitcoin transaction fee is around $13 right now, so it would cost a similar amount, or even double if there’s two transactions involved (you -> recipient -> withdrawal exchange).

That's the guaranteed 10 minute block cost.

A lightning transaction currently costs $0.000432200 but you would have to have an existing channel open (which would make sense for a heavy user to have already)

Are btc’s 13 dollars fixed costs? Because western union’s arent

The transaction costs are variable depending on the speed with which you want your transaction processed. Miners have an incentive to include transactions with the highest fees in the next block, so when the network is congested with tons of unprocessed transactions, you'll be paying more.

And that's only looking at on-chain mechanics. Solutions exist to remedy issues with scalability of the underlying blockchain.

Interesting. Does it mean Bitcoin is not immune to DOS attacks where basically me and my friend transfer 0.0000001 btc between each other repeatedly for giggles.

My understanding is that the miners would have no incentive to include the transaction, and so each transfer would take a long time to be processed.

To, if you don't mind waiting until the lull of the day you only have to pay like 30 cents.

I once under estimated how much cash I needed in Germany. The easiest way I could find to fix that was to use WU to send myself cash. It was far easier than dealing with my own bank to fix the ATM card. Bitcoin was a non-starter.

I just don't get the Western Union hate.

Bitcoin is a nightmare to use. The transaction can take hours to clear, you need specific forms of ID to open an account, and the fees are insane.

I just now sent $100 to someone in South America and it cost me $17.

Bitcoin is a fad that targets and takes advantage of gullible people and those involved in the illegal drug trade.

> The transaction can take hours to clear, you need specific forms of ID to open an account, and the fees are insane.

This is for exchanges, right?

You can have a confirmation with Lightning for like less than 1/100th of a penny and there's no ID requirements for Bitcoin.

I wanted to point out how using Bitcoin is in practice at least equally difficult as using Western Union. For any real use case you need to use an exchange, and AFAIK Lightning Network is not yet widely deployed.

> you need specific forms of ID to open an account

To start using Bitcoin, you don't need any ID. You can download, install, and use the normal Bitcoin client.

You only need ID to open an account on an exchange, and that's because exchanges have to follow Know Your Customer laws just like banks. But if you sell something for Bitcoin, you can accept it without an account anywhere.

You only need an account somewhere to convert between fiat and Bitcoin, and even that can be avoided if you find someone willing to sell you coins for cash.

Yes, any one can transact in Bitcoin quite trivially. But as soon as you want to use it for anything practical outside the tech bubble, you need an account on an exchange. At that point Western Union is probably easier for most people.

Now, I agree that WU is a bit of a nightmare, and preying to an extent on the poor, remittances, etc.; and that better fintech alternatives are required, such as TransferWise.

However, part of the costs of course arise from supporting

a) a branch network that also enables those without smartphone to use the service, and

b) all the pesky KYC AML measures that Bitcoin conveniently circumvents.

I just looked up the cost of doing a regular money transfer, and that adds up to that amount as well - plus extra for collection. International money transfer is expensive.

I just looked it up, for BTC you currently pay a transfer fee equivalent to $11, with spikes to $17 in the past month.

I am positive that you can send to a bank account. If you use the app, the fee is around 3 euros or 5.

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