91–100 of 134 posts
I had an account with Coinbase back in 2015. It was a humble simple exchange: ACH in, BTC out and vice versa. What happened? IPO happened. You can't sell humble simple exchange to stockholders, you must be Masters of the Universe.
Meanwhile, I needed to pay folks who have fled the country, and now are located in Kazakhstan. I used... Western Union. Surprisingly, it was without any fees, I sent the exact amount in dollars from the US and they received exactly the same amount in US dollars in minutes. I don't know why Bitcoin today is something people want to use, since you can send Western Union or use other payment methods (like Wise) to almos…
As for Ukrainians: have you considered using PayPal? Since last year it's widely supported in Ukraine and opening an account is fairly easy.
Have you tried Wise (formerly TransferWise)? I don't know if they have issues with transfers to Ukraine, but in general they have provided an excellent service for paying contractors in foreign currency. We also use Deel and I can recommend it. It's $50/month for contractors which is usually sufficient depending on employment law (FTE through Deel is more expensive ). They handle all payments and we just connect our…
I use Wise to transfer USD to CAD and pay friends/family via Interac (Canadian electronic bank transfer where all you need is someone's registered email address).
It's a brilliantly smooth experience, perfectly acceptable fees given the alternatives. Being able to go US bank account -> Canadian interac is worth a lot to me. I'm grateful they exist.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Western Union being free is the outlier here.
True, but then the stuff Western Union charges a significant margin for is the stuff which is a very useful service (getting spendable local cash in someone's village). If you can get that at all with crypto, the guy in the village exchanging cryptos for local currency is going to charge even more...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unless you use an exchange. The best way to handle payments would be direct transfer from one personal wallet to another. No exchange necessary. No red tape. Buying the Bitcoin with fiat so you can put it in your own wallet for direct transfers is the problem. You generally need a centralized exchange for that. Also, the person you transfer btc to will generally need a centralized exchange so they can convert to fiat…
Hm, there is https://localbitcoins.com/ or https://coinatmradar.com/ . It is way cheaper than moneygram or similar services, just check out the options... from where to where do you want to transfer? You would even find people on meetups which would help.
Meanwhile, I needed to pay folks who have fled the country, and now are located in Kazakhstan. I used... Western Union. Surprisingly, it was without any fees, I sent the exact amount in dollars from the US and they received exactly the same amount in US dollars in minutes. I don't know why Bitcoin today is something people want to use, since you can send Western Union or use other payment methods (like Wise) to almos…
The fee is the y-intercept, and the exchange rate is the slope. These businesses make money by manipulating either or bother of these numbers.
I would like to get into crypto (for transfer, not for asset speculation) but can't understand the point of using a decentralized ledger and yet using these centralized exchanges which control the on/off ramps. Isn't the whole idea not to rely on gatekeepers? There's been news (Canadian truckers incident) where the government told Paypal/Visa/Mastercard etc to stop the flow on crypto currency. Am I missing something…
As Ron Paul once said about the Federal Reserve system, "If that doesn't make any sense to you, then you understand it just fine."
https://newrepublic.com/article/94477/ron-paul-distorted-lib...