$82,982,977 USD: $ 0.04 Transaction Fee • Hacker News Board

Re: $82,982,977 USD: $ 0.04 Transaction Fee

#41

Post by stonogo » Wed, Dec 03, 2014, 5:26 PM UTC

thisjepisje wrote: post #5

stonogo wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it were a credit card transaction, money would have changed hands.

Care to elaborate?

This was pretty obviously some internal accounting shuffling and not some kind of payment processing. If your bank charges a fee to move funds between accounts your bank sucks.

Re: $82,982,977 USD: $ 0.04 Transaction Fee

#42

Post by pcrh » Wed, Dec 03, 2014, 5:41 PM UTC

bpicolo wrote: post #25

pcrh wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How come that doesn't correlate with this graph showing the dollar value of transactions: https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume-...

Because https://blockchain.info/charts/market-price

The decreased US$:BTC exchange rate doesn't appear to be sufficient to counteract almost exactly the increased volume of BTC traded.

Re: $82,982,977 USD: $ 0.04 Transaction Fee

#43

Post by zanny » Wed, Dec 03, 2014, 5:42 PM UTC

saosebastiao wrote: post #35

tinco wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think because of the design of bitcoin $0.04 transactions are something they want to actively discourage. From what I understand of Bitcoin, the future will hold only large-scale transactions like this one, and as little sub-dollar transactions as possible. (because the network load of the system scales with the transaction quantity)

This, along with regulatory challenges, has hinted to me for at least a few years now that if bitcoin has any long term future at all, it will be as an exchange currency.

Its destiny is cryptogold where the store of value is in the security of sha256. In the future they will probably adopt new cryptography standards into the protocol as current encryption standards are broken down (ie, sha1 was used at first but you should not use it anymore due to its growing leakiness).

Re: $82,982,977 USD: $ 0.04 Transaction Fee

#44

Post by matthewarkin » Wed, Dec 03, 2014, 5:43 PM UTC

A whole $.10 cheaper than sending a FedWire! that's % cheaper!

Re: $82,982,977 USD: $ 0.04 Transaction Fee

#45

Post by ufmace » Wed, Dec 03, 2014, 5:45 PM UTC

I've never moved around tens of millions of dollars, so I don't know what the usual procedures and fees are. I have moved thousands around between accounts, and the fee is a couple of dollars, a tenth of a percent. It's hard to believe that the fee percentage for a normal wire transfer for those amounts is higher than that.

Given that, this doesn't seem like much of a big deal. I suppose it's neat, but when you're working with that much money, does a few tens of dollars matter?

Considering also that moving any significant amount of this money to Fiat to actually purchase anything will likely be massively difficult, involve huge fees and delays, and may even distort the entire exchange market, and it seems even less useful.

Infact, the largest USD exchange seems to be https://www.bitfinex.com right now, and this transaction represents around 2 weeks of their volume. It might well take months to convert this to USD without causing too much market distortion.

On an unrelated note, damn the CNY exchange volume is massive, and seems to dwarf the total USD volume. I wonder what's up with that?

Re: $82,982,977 USD: $ 0.04 Transaction Fee

#46

Post by zanny » Wed, Dec 03, 2014, 5:46 PM UTC

pcrh wrote: post #24

deweller wrote: post #20

For those here who are wondering if bitcoin use is growing, here is a graph of transactions over time: https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions?timespan=all

How come that doesn't correlate with this graph showing the dollar value of transactions: https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume-...

People are spending less in smaller transactions more often, indicating people are actually using btc for exchange of goods and services rather than as an investment. The spikes in dollar volume were when the market was making major movements, and people were moving USD into and out of BTC in huge quantities.

The fact that btc generation slows down over time also means that while transaction volume will go up total monetary exchange won't go up as fast because its limited more by the size of the economy (how much money people have in btc to spend) than in how they are using it.

Re: $82,982,977 USD: $ 0.04 Transaction Fee

#47

Post by cbhl » Wed, Dec 03, 2014, 5:49 PM UTC

ufmace wrote: post #45

I've never moved around tens of millions of dollars, so I don't know what the usual procedures and fees are. I have moved thousands around between accounts, and the fee is a couple of dollars, a tenth of a percent. It's hard to believe that the fee percentage for a normal wire transfer for those amounts is higher than that. Given that, this doesn't seem like much of a big deal. I suppose it's neat, but when you're wo…

CNY has currency controls on moving money into and out of the country. Bitcoin, less so.

Re: $82,982,977 USD: $ 0.04 Transaction Fee

#48

Post by lectrick » Wed, Dec 03, 2014, 5:51 PM UTC

pcrh wrote: post #24

deweller wrote: post #20

For those here who are wondering if bitcoin use is growing, here is a graph of transactions over time: https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions?timespan=all

How come that doesn't correlate with this graph showing the dollar value of transactions: https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume-...

The number of transactions is probably proportional to something like the absolute value of the first derivative of the change in value. So basically, when the value is fluctuating quickly, there are more trades/transactions.

Re: $82,982,977 USD: $ 0.04 Transaction Fee

#49

Post by mrb » Wed, Dec 03, 2014, 5:58 PM UTC

nhayden wrote: post #19

debacle wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does bitcoin have the kind of volume/liquidity to make that kind of exchange without causing a significant disturbance in the exchange rate?

No, it would cause a pretty big swing. Large sums like this are unlikely to be put on an exchange, though - they'd be done through a private sale.

You are misinformed. 217k BTC is only a fraction of the monthly volume traded on some of the largest exchanges: they trade 3-6 million BTC per month (http://bitcoinity.org/markets/list?currency=ALL&span=30d), so one could trade 217k spread over 30 days without causing swings. (Only if you did the trade at once, it would cause one sudden swing.)

Re: $82,982,977 USD: $ 0.04 Transaction Fee

#50

Post by mlrtime » Wed, Dec 03, 2014, 6:03 PM UTC

koyote wrote: post #40

mlrtime wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you do this transfer often I recommend moving your currency to a brokerage and then doing a FX trade. You will often get close to BBG spot rate using IB.

How would you go about setting something like that up? I assume this comes with quite a few caveats?

Sign up with a brokerage account, there are many. interactive brokers is one of the cheapest (I'm not affiliated). Then, link your two bank accounts with the brokerage. Buy/Sell you currency then transfer the funds via wire/ach...