Show HN: Peanut – A Modern Money App

That's an excellent question and has a lot of nuance to it. In principle there's ~200 countries in the world, and most of them have their own currency, which leads do 200^200 = 40_000 exchange rates in the world. More even; most currencies have wildly different exchange depending on what exchange you are actually using and how much liquidity that exchange has.

In practice, most currencies are actually liquid against the American dollar; and maybe a few other major coins. This is mostly a technical issue, since liquidity is fragmented and it is just easier to trade against what you know everyone else has: the all-dominant US Dollar [1].

Now, enough theory, how do we do it at Peanut?

Currently, all user balances at Peanut are dollarized; that means users hold USD stablecoins. This is a deliberate simplification; in the future, we plan to roll out other stablecoin support (especially important for Europeans. The rest of the world is pretty happy with holding USD).

When we have to do an exchange to a local currency, like Argentinian Pesos, we work with a local exchange provider. They are able to give us the best exchange rate, because we go directly from a USD-like stablecoin (USDC or USDT usually), to their currency.

For them, USDC & USDT are functionally equivalent to hard cash, and they price it accordingly. They also get it IMMEDIATELY; they don't have to wait multiple days until settlement and until we wire them the funds from some American or European Bank. This is much better for us than for other fintechs like Revolut or Wise; they have to have their own liquidity (and all the infra, compliance, and legal that that entails!)

In the future, I expect our exchange rates to get even better. As foreign exchange continues to grow ON chain, liquidity on chain will increase; until it is the largest (and thus CHEAPEST) exchange in the world.

[1] Note: with the slow end of Pax Americana under the current US regime, the adoption of US Dollar has actually been falling somewhat; replaced by sovereign nations and funds actually holding more gold instead of usd . That's also why we've seen gold at all time highs

Unfortunately Firefox rarely has passkey support; so our whole auth system sadly doesn't work on that browser. In the future we'll add multiple auth methods. But for now you can switch to Brave, Chrome or most other Chromium browsers

Apologies!

No, the landing page communicates customer fees (which are 0 for peanut to peanut flows and pass through for banking flows). We're very transparent with any FX or fees users experience.

I'm not quite sure I understand the logic of mentioning future merchant monetization plans on the landing page?

Well, as a potential end customer, I want to know why I can trust you. You product is free, and you're handling my money. You telling me your revenue model is through merchants gives me the confidence you're not gonna pull me a weird one.

Could be as simple as "But how do you make money then" in the FAQ.

thanks for the answer

maybe my question wasn't clearly written, sorry

I meant how are you planning to handle different exchange operation types like on this example situation:

when you send or receive international transfers in Brazil and you exchange it for BRL you need to declare what is the nature of the exchange operation you are doing

if you are receiving for services that you provided, if it's a transfer from an account you own, if it's a donation, the list goes on

this is important because of the different treatment each of them receive on compliance, risk and even fees