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Comment by diggan | Hacker News Reader

> are there any uses for crypto other that sanctions busting and drug dealing?

Have you lost your creative muscle completely, or does the hate for cryptocurrency blind you to even be able to evaluate if this bad thing might come with benefits too?

Personally, sending money (legal money, no sanctions nor involving drugs) between South America and Europe got a lot better as people started to learn how to receive/send USDC for example. I think that's the biggest change in my own life between before and after cryptocurrency became more commonplace. So much money spent on fees with Western Union and all those shitty platforms, before you could send USDC in half a minute with minimal fees.

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The thing is, most of the reason for the fees you’re complaining about is things like government regulation and insurance. Now, you may not like the government regulation, since in many cases the governments are corrupt (South America is a good example). And, you may not like paying insurance, since you’re probably ok with the risk of getting scammed, but there it is.

Crypto is like buying a product online for cheaper, but instead of using Amazon or Walmart, you buy it from some random guy on Craigslist whose brother delivers it. Sure, it’s cheaper and lower fees, but if the product doesn’t show up you’re SOL.

> Now, you may not like the government regulation

I do like government regulation, and I think we (Spain/Europe) need more of it, especially around everything digital and also cryptocurrencies.

> And, you may not like paying insurance, since you’re probably ok with the risk of getting scammed, but there it is.

I don't mind paying/not paying for insurance. The transaction I do are between two well known parties that trust each other. If I could just get an IBAN and do a normal bank transfer, I'd do that instead. But alas, I cannot, so alternatives get used instead.

> Crypto is like buying a product online for cheaper, but instead of using Amazon or Walmart, you buy it from some random guy on Craigslist whose brother delivers it. Sure, it’s cheaper and lower fees, but if the product doesn’t show up you’re SOL.

Sure, if you're purchasing goods from strangers on the internet, I understand your example and agree. But all use cases are not like that, particularly not the one you're currently responding to.

The reasons I use USDC/cryptocurrency for doing these transactions is because it's easier, cheaper and faster. If banks could get international transfers (for everyone, not just select countries) in order, and I could as easily, fast and cheap do a normal bank transfer, I'd prefer that.

There are still fees everywhere.

fees for each trade. Fees for selling usdc for usd. Fees for just interacting with the chain in the first place.

What’s more is your transaction is in competition with other similar transactions based on how much fee you’re willing to pay, so the fees are extremely volatile.

But it is much much faster and imo less nerve wracking than waiting for western union.

> But it is much much faster and imo less nerve wracking than waiting for western union.

I have a feeling you don’t do international transactions. It’s not a binary decision between Western Union and crypto.

I don't know if it's the same between other countries, but we've sent money back and forth between Italy and the US with "Wise" (Transferwise) and it was quick, cheap and easy and didn't feel shady.

> There are still fees everywhere.

Yes, technically that's true. But there is still (at least personally) a big difference between paying 5 EUR for sending a transfer of 100 EUR and then the receiving having to pay 5 EUR to withdraw it on the other side, and having to pay ~1 EUR in network costs when sending USDC, and then the receiver can use it without having to pay more.

> What’s more is your transaction is in competition with other similar transactions based on how much fee you’re willing to pay

This is a non-problem for basic transfers really, not even once during ~3 or more years have my transactions failed to execute or take longer than a minute or two.

Just to clarify: are you actually currently sending funds with cruptocurrency, or are you saying the use case for crypto currency was that it served as a forcing function for institutions to make it more convenient to send money without cruptocurrency?

> are you actually currently sending funds with cruptocurrency

Yes, actively using it as a cheaper, faster and smoother means to send money to family back in South America for the last few years. Before that we were using Western Union, MoneyGram and all those other services that like to tack on fee after fee after fee.

> sending money (legal money, no sanctions nor involving drugs) between South America and Europe

If the encumbrances were really just from middlemen, you don't need a cryptocurrency to solve that; you just need a cheaper middleman.

As mentioned elsewhere, I don't really mind using a bank or a different middleman, I'm simply using what I found to be the fastest, simplest and cheapest. It just happened to be cryptocurrency in this case.

If we had cheap and fast international bank transfers with all countries, I'd just use my normal bank account.

Why did you use Western Union instead of Wise or some other lower cost alternative?

Seems Wise isn't at all a lower cost alternative, nor does it seem very fast. I pay a flat fee of ~1 EUR per transfer with USDC on Arbitrum which arrives after a couple of seconds, while Wise is giving me a quote of 3.39 EUR for a 100 EUR transfer, 20EUR fee for a 1000 EUR transfer, and says it would arrive tomorrow.

But what is conversion cost and the transaction cost to convert USD to USDC and then back?

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