
$82,982,977 USD: $ 0.04 Transaction Fee - cyphersanctus
https://blockchain.info/tx/8f1d3a8ef6b2d4a25d2f499279e01518b4770819ccbc39a765c4c326170c61b3
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MCRed
This is great. I think the downside, though, is the $0.04 transaction that
incurs a $0.04 transaction fee.

For instance, there's this transaction for .02 BTC that incurred a $0.19 fee.
[https://blockchain.info/tx/a2933a1dc53361a7770c2a9d998c1fe30...](https://blockchain.info/tx/a2933a1dc53361a7770c2a9d998c1fe30165609717e820f82668839091a2fc94)

I'm not sure why this tiny transaction cost so much more than the huge one,
but being able to support 0.00045 BTC transactions at reasonable cost is the
challenge.

This isn't just a fee challenge, but a blockchain-bloat challenge as well.

But if it can be solved, I think it would be a turning point for BTC.

~~~
tinco
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)

~~~
saosebastiao
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.

~~~
zanny
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).

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hkmurakami
Having been recently charged a 4% worse FX rate than the going rate in an
5-figure international wire transfer, a world where the current financial
transaction system is torn apart cannot come fast enough!

~~~
mlrtime
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.

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koyote
How would you go about setting something like that up?

I assume this comes with quite a few caveats?

~~~
mlrtime
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...

~~~
hkmurakami
Seems awesome for personal uses (which I expect to be doing on a fairly
regular basis). I persume this might make business tax compliance a bit more
complex, but at some point it may be worthwhile for me in that realm as well.

Thanks!

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ufmace
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](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?

~~~
natrius
Most CNY exchanges don't have trading fees. As a result, comparing their
volumes to USD exchanges isn't really meaningful.

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deweller
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](https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions?timespan=all)

~~~
pcrh
How come that doesn't correlate with this graph showing the dollar value of
transactions:

[https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-
volume-...](https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume-
usd?timespan=all&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address=)

~~~
bpicolo
Because [https://blockchain.info/charts/market-
price](https://blockchain.info/charts/market-price)

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

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vectorpush
I hope that the recipient intends to use those funds on the darknet or
overstock.com, otherwise the fees for converting even a fraction of that sum
into usable money will _greatly_ exceed $0.04.

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

~~~
nhayden
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.

~~~
mrb
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](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.)

~~~
nhayden
Dumping it all at once is what I had in mind.

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Tech1
Any guesses if this is related to the Silk Road coins the feds auctioned off
not too long ago? Or the even more recent second auction?

~~~
Alupis
unlikely since the bidding is still going/just-started.

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bhouston
Who has $82M in Bitcoins?

~~~
wmf
Keep in mind that some companies keep all their customers' BTC in one big
"account".

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greenleafjacob
If it was a credit card transaction, it'd be 2,406,506.

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

~~~
thisjepisje
Care to elaborate?

~~~
ryanthejuggler
The implication is that Bitcoin isn't "real" money.

Never mind that money is a social construct and is useful whenever two parties
agree on a common value.

~~~
furyofantares
I think the implication is actually that the person sending this transaction
was also the recipient.

~~~
ryanthejuggler
Good point; your explanation makes more sense. I pretty much only use Bitcoin
to buy lunch and laptop stickers, so I forget that people with significant
amounts of it have to shuffle it like this.

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matthewarkin
A whole $.10 cheaper than sending a FedWire! that's <insert really small
percent that I'm too lazy to do the math on>% cheaper!

