[krisdol]

Full disclosure: I own about $11 worth of bitcoin if I round up a bit, so this might be biased.

The most convincing "point" of bitcoin I've heard is to accomodate transfer of large sums of money across borders, quickly, with minimal transaction costs and oversight. Everyone here can afford the fee to transact 8 billion dollars worth of bitcoin. And settlement happens in seconds to a couple minutes. That's appealing to people trying to move millions or billions of dollars around.

[blackbrokkoli]

Yeah, sure settlement in Bitcoin happens within a few minutes. Getting that converted into usable money is a whole other story, no?

I can basically think of two scenario types when you are in need of international, spontaneous money transfer:

a) "I just got carjacked in Sierra Leone and need some money for an hotel and a flight home"

b) "I have some weird novel business and I would like to pay my contractors in East Timor biweekly"

I cannot image using Bitcoin for either, first one because of the convert-to-money-thing, second one because of the volatility. There is also some kind of - how do you call this - meta-trust that I just don't have in Bitcoin: Go off-grid for two weeks and there is a non trivial chance that some weird shit happened within crypto that is now an obstacle (crash or rally, outlawing, split, ...). That does not happen with US dollars.

I got the feeling that this is yet another incredibly obscure use case that doesn't even really work Bitcoin fanatics (not directed at the quite reasonable parent comment) use to justify their gambling and Lambo-dreams. Just like "it could be the new gold" or "what if the US gov collapses".

But I am certainly no expert in international money transfer by any means, so feel free to change my mind!

[throw89323432]

I had contractor on Litecoin in Russia for 6 months. Worked pretty well.

[FalconSensei]

> Go off-grid for two weeks and there is a non trivial chance that some weird shit happened within crypto that is now an obstacle

For people in countries with a more stable economy/currency, this is very true. Even in countries with a bigger inflation, things are a bit more predictable.

But of course, different countries/economies/currencies have different realities.

[GoblinSlayer]

Life outside of USA is basically cryptozoology: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-crypto-currencies-africa-...

[SuoDuanDao]

>Go off-grid for two weeks and there is a non trivial chance that some weird shit happened within crypto that is now an obstacle (crash or rally, outlawing, split, ...). That does not happen with US dollars.

That is fair, but it would be more accurate to say 'has not happened with US dollars since 1930'. Currencies collapse is not that unusual an occurrence, my own (German) grandparents live through five separate currency regimes in the same country. Being truly uncorrelated with most other investments can be a real selling point for a hedge like BTC.

Disclosure: I own several cryptocurrencies including BTC which I mentally categorise as 'collectables'.

[u678u]

No if you have millions or billions basic wire transfers are instant and cheap. It is more interesting for if you have a few hundred or a few thousand dollars, where a $10-$50 fee is significant. Or you want to bypass regulations or bureaucracy eg send money to a friend in Argentina or Lebanon which have currency controls.

[whatshisface]

Bitcoin's use as a way of bypassing currency controls is one of the best arguments against it, because governments, already prone to suspicion towards anything that might upset their monetary policy, will have no quarter towards anything that upsets their laws.

[anonisko]

https://twitter.com/JackMallers/status/1346867753253220356

[ur-whale]

> basic wire transfers are instant and cheap

This is woefully incorrect. Wire transfers are neither instant nor cheap, depending on the source and destination country.

If you wire from US to US, or EU to EU, they yeah, maybe.

The moment you move large sums across borders, especially to /from countries that aren't in the US's "good guys" list (as dumb and childish as that sounds, this is typical language in USistan for politicians and media), things gets very tricky.

[systemvoltage]

That’s the thing. By the time the transfer takes place, BTC exchange rate is now 7% off. How convenient is the transfer mechanism when the underlying is a speculative instrument?

Until BTC exchange rate gets stable or gets pegged do the ground, it’s gonna float around in the air of extreme volatility and manipulation - pretty risky adventure to transfer large sums of money.

[spmurrayzzz]

This is problematic for layer 1 settlement for sure. But there are layer 2 solutions that can help with the slippage issue (lightning network being the most prevalent). With a sufficient density of multisig wallet availability, as a proxy for liquidity, transactions are near-instant.

That said, there are differences in settlement guarantees at layer 2 that might make certain use cases less optimal.

[panarky]

I prefer to own an asset with high volatility that gets more valuable over time than an asset with low volatility that gets less valuable over time.

[mancerayder]

Forget million and billions. Hasn't anyone on this thread lived and worked abroad? Transferring 10s of thousands from the US to the EU or vice versa costs a ton in the banks skimming off the back of exchange rates that they choose and fees. There are ways to do it via trading accounts but it's a pain.

[louloulou]

It's actually pretty cheap and easy these days with a transferwise account. But I agree, it used to be a massive pain, and still is for smaller currencies or more closed-off banking systems like japan.

[sorbits]

> And settlement happens in seconds to a couple minutes

That is incorrect. On average it takes 10 minutes to mine a block, but you have to submit the transaction to be included in the block, so > 10 minutes before it appears on the blockchain.

However, there are actually many block chains, as miners creates block in parallel, it’s the longest one that is the “official”, but the minute you see your transaction in a block, you do not know if this block will stay in the longest chain, so in general you want at least 5 new blocks, after your block, before it is considered “safe”.

So now we are talking about one hour to do a transaction, and that assumes that the network is not overloaded, because there is also a cap on number of transactions that can be included in a block.

All in all, it is a terrible system for fast transactions.

[jkepler]

But how quickly does SWIFT or ACH settle? When one wires money overseas, settlement is counted in days, not minutes or hours as in bitcoin's case. Most of us use layer 2 or 3 solutions in our legacy national currency systems, such as Cash App, PayPal, Venmo, etc. Non elite don't have access directly to FedWire or ACH or SWIFT... it all has to pass through banks and other 'trusted third parties.'

Also, eventually most lower-value transactions in bitcoin will be on layer two technologies, like the lightning network (peer to peer) or liquid bitcoin (federated peer to peer, mostly for exchanges and traders to quickly move funds between exchanges).

[tomca32]

I live and work in the US, but originally I'm from Croatia. I wire money every month to my family back there.

It takes 5 work days for the wire to fully clear. Since 5 days is a full work week, it almost always bleeds over to the weekend and in reality takes 7 days.

BTC might still be a terrible system for international transactions but it's still 168 times faster than the one that exists now.

[FalconSensei]

Awesome, go to the supermarket, pay with BTC and wait there for an hour for your transaction to complete.

Or try to buy anything time/quantity limited, so you don't get it because the transaction took too long to complete.

Meanwhile, in Canada, I just do a money transfer by email without any fees (if sending more than $10), and it's almost instant if the receiver have auto-deposit set up.

[cortesoft]

The price volatility is way more expensive than transaction cost, if you have billions of dollars.

[ad31mar]

It's usually in your favour tho.

Anyways, there are plenty of stablecoins if that's your thing and you can use Bitcoin (the network) for the rails only.

[kelnos]

People who want to move millions or billions of dollars around don't care about a $30 wire fee. What they do care about is recourse in the case of fraud or mistakes, which Bitcoin by design does not give you.

Moving large amount of money without government interference, however, is certainly a feature of Bitcoin that fiat currency usually doesn't have. And there are some (though perhaps not many?) non-shady reasons why someone might want this.

[MrMan]

By the time recourse and other modern financial conveniences are built on btc it will lose its luster for the hucksters

[ska]

I've never understood this argument. Moving large amounts of one currency between countries isn't expensive or slow (relative to how quickly you typically need to do this). Assuming you are allowed to do it at all. Oversight is a different story, but there aren't many legitimate reasons to want to do that (probably none that aren't problematic). There are, of course, a ton of illegitimate reasons but that's a different conversation.

Getting that 1mm+ from one currency to another is a whole different story, but that story only gets worse if you involve crypto.

Paying $40 in wire fees to move $200 sucks, but it's just not an issue on large transactions. So I think your real use case is lots of small transactions, not a few big ones. And unless you can spend the crypto directly, the volatility can kill this application pretty easily.

What am I missing?

[irae]

It is not that simple once you cross borders to countries USD is used by all kinds of criminals. When you have honest business, you are screwed by the system.

Here in Brazil, getting money in and out is a nightmare if above 5k USD.

I live in Brazil and work for a US company. My first month payment took 3 months to clear, and because of 3 accumulated payments I got audited and the 4th pay got delayed again. The first one that cleared in 3 days was the 6th payment. All payments were charged 40 USD to my employer, but 20 was charged by middle man every month.

I also have a US based health insurance but (again) I currently live in Brazil. I had a surgery reimbursement be withheld for 65 days, I had to send dozens of documents and when they finally cleared, I had not only lost to exchange rates, on middle man bank took 20 USD and my branch in Brazil took an extra 170 USD.

[MrMan]

I get free wire transfers at my bank