Bianca is going to Brazil and her family has asked her to bring some stuff.
One of the things she is bringing is a breastmilk pump. I don’t know why breast milk pumps need to be so expensive in Brazil but they are. About 2.5x more than in the Netherlands.
So her family sent some money to my bank account with Transferwise. Around 500 BRL or 145 euro.
The fee on this transaction is not even bad. It's 2.5% wich is a lot cheaper than going through a regular bank. The whole experience via the website is also pleasant. It feels a bit like Shapeshift or Blocktrades but with regular currencies.
In fact, the whole experience is nice, compared to regular banking, but for a couple of things.
There is still a substantial fee (because there is a third party, that provides a good service but needs to earn money)
It's still extremely slow. It took up to 6 days to get the money to my account. In that period you have no idea where your money is and it creates a feeling of uneasiness.
Here you can see how money is saved on the transaction. It's pretty genius for its time.
Why are you promoting this ancient technology?
I'm not.
But I know a lot of families use regular banking to transfer money between countries and maybe this knowledge will help them save some percentage on their transactions.
Anything better than losing money to a bank.
My hope is of course that everything will be powered by blockchain technology in the future.
But I have to stay realistic for now.
Cryptocurrencies are superior.
Everyone that has used a cryptocurrency once knows that it's a far better way to move currencies between countries. To make the comparison with STEEM vs Transferwise.
With Transferwise her family sent me €145 in 6 days, with a 2,5% fee.
With STEEM her family could have sent me 145 STEEM dollars in 3 seconds, with no fee.
Every time I look at these numbers my mind blows.
Make a Steem account for your family in Brasil I asked Bianca
I asked Bianca to make a Steem account for her family when she's there so we can exchange Steemdollars around instead of going through a bank at all.
They don't have to blog but it's an instant 'bank' account for them to use.
While making the account is very easily done. I have not yet figured out how her family would go from Steem dollars to Brazilian Reais in a simple way and vice versa.
This last Step is crucial for this adaptation.
I do like these challenges because it makes me feel I'm sort of working on creating a better world in my own little bubble.
But it's not always easy. What I need is a Brazilian me :)
Follow Me @exyle
Hot off the @exyle press! So glad I caught this early on. It's crazy when you break it down like that just how ineffective the systems of old are. But with the introduction of blockchain, I hope their days are numbered. Unnecessary fees and long waiting times will be a thing of the past.
What an awesome idea to get your Brazilian in-laws to setup a Steemit account. Just think, one day in the future, it may be a standard way of transacting money internationally. What a great time we live in! To be witnessing a financial revolution taking places before our very eyes!
Blockchain will change everything. When I went to Brasil last time her dad was really interested in BTC but wasn't ready to take that next step (to buy). With STEEM that next step became so much easier. And this is only 2 years ago!
The key to the success to all this lies of course in the acceptance of the Steem dollar as a currency. I wouldn't mind at all being paid in Steem dollars because for me it represents value.
If the city were her dad lives would accept Steem dollars as a currency because they feel it has value we are where we want to be. No need to exchange anything.
As of yet, this is not the case of course, but I'll hope it will be someday. STEEM being used on a social media platform makes a huge difference in speeding this all up. That's why I love this place so much.
Bitcoin exchanges are all over the world now, with Bitcoin to local currency and vice versa. At the moment for altcoins like Steem needs to use an exchange like Poloniex to convert it to Bitcoin. Then from Bitcoin to local currency. I am hoping that in the near future most altcoins can be converted straight to local currency/purchase directly easily. Here in the Philippines I can easily exchange it at coins.ph and pick up my money thru cardless ATM transaction at zero fees, it's coinbase in the US, coinjar at Australia, Unocoin at India or you can just search at localbitcoins.com and it will suggest the best exchanges in your area.
Awesome reply. So much useful info here. Thank you.
You're welcome @exyle , it's my pleasure to provide useful info. By the way for all your readers I have a list on my file folder on these legitimate and reputable exchanges
1.For USA , Canada , UK - coinbase.com
2.For Australia,Newzealand - Cointree.Com
3.For India - zebpay.com , unopay.com
4.For Philippines - Coins.ph
5.For Singapore - Coinhako.com
6.For Malaysia - Coins.my
7.For Nigeria And Africa - nairaex.com
8.For Dubai and rest of UAE - bitoasis.net
9.For Indonesia - bitcoin.co.id
10.For Rest of the world - localbitcoins.com
11.Purchase bitcoins using credit card/debit card - cex.io , buy.bitcoin.com
I think everything is expensive there, isn't their currency inflating all the time?
I remembered this when the PS4 was released:
Its ridiculous.
Btw, typo on Brazil in the last header.
No, it's not because of the inflation (existent but not skyrocket) the dollar or euro or other currencies are so high for us here. The economic resection and the pressure to have a an underpriced currency makes the Real weak (good for exportation of our commodities like soy, coffee and so on). Here we usually call this over price on products as "custo Brasil" (Brazil's cost). Why? Well, we have an heavy tax policy that overcharges everything that is not produced here and even the products produced here there's overlapping taxes on the production chain. Plus the greed to profit a lot over every selling (big margins) makes the everyday consumer products to cost much more here.
Fiat to Crypto - The Final Frontier.
I like that :)
Muito bom o post! Estou utilizando este tipo de tranferencia ja faz alguns meses, e realmente nao tem nem comparaçao! Adeus bancos!!! (;
Obrigado! é o futuro!
Seria ótimo que a Bianca aderisse ao Steemit, precisamos de mais brasileiros aqui :) Abraço amigo @exyle
Ela é, mais não usando muito. Um pouco triste eh! Abraço amigo @jsantana.
The only thing we need is the stability in the price fluctuations of steem dollar...which i hope will happen very soon, when it is adopted massively. Otherwise nothing can stop for being it used as a medium of money transactions.
Cool stuff. Thank you
and thank you!
Great to know Crypto is working faster than bank.
It's superior in so many ways!
6 days!! You are so right, that's awful and I can imagine the unease in between. Crypto and blockchain is definitely the answer. If only mass adoption was here!
Mass adoption will come. It's just slower than I would like :)
Agreed on both points!
What a great idea for people who need to transfer money to open a Steemit account! You maybe just "coined" a new category of user.
The idea was always there. The problem is the acceptance of the STEEM dollar. I can't go to my local grocery store and pay in STEEM dollars. So I need to Exchange it somehow. In the Netherlands, this is no problem but it's hard to figure out how to do it in other countries. Worldwide STEEM dollar acceptance would be the ultimate dream but that's a long way to go. But one can dream right :)
Ah, I must've just been out of the loop. There's huge potential there for families sending money back to their home countries but we would need to teach them how to convert the currency and such. Yes, we can dream, that's the first step to changing our realities.
I guess her best option is to create and account at a local exchanger like Mercado Bitcoin
So what I do is first I send Steem to Poloniex, there I buy BTC then I transfer it to my local exchanger, sell my BTC and then I can withdraw it to brazilian reais to my bank account.... long journey but it works well. ;)
Thanks for showing the way. I guess they can also use shapeshift to skip the Poloniex step (I'm not a big fan of exchanges anymore). I'm just afraid this might be all a bit too complicated for now. I also can't be there this time to help them with this. But I would love to take them on this journey.
Never tried to use shapeshift before. You're right. It is a long process, not complicated actually, but takes some time to understand it, specially because she will need to sell this coins on the market. Would be nice to know a better way to have R$ from steem dollars.
Crypto currency is the way for the future no matter who says what and people may think it is a some sort of hoax. DLT (distributed ledger technology) is the thing that big guys and the manipulators most afraid of. Now, bitcoin had proved that it can certainly viable, more and more people will start using it. Great post by the way.
Thank you and It sure is the future!
It's probably higher when you account for conversion spread, which is usually where they make most of their money on transfers like this.
If it's higher than it makes an ever better case for cryptocurrencies.
Cryptocurrency trades also have a conversion spread, if the end result is fiat. So it makes them hard to compare, except when you can specifically point out how much the conversion spread is (is changes day to day, even minute to minute sometimes).
Only if you use crypto without any kind of conversion, is there no such spread (eg. if you sent Bitcoin, then they used it to buy something directly).
My point is really just to make clear that it's not actually straightforward to calculate how much a money transfer is costing you. The main fee is a stealth fee, it may be costing you twice what you think or even more.
The sad thing is that crypto will have a similar fee when the family in brazil converts Reals to steem or any other digital currency. And you will have the same when you convert to euro. The "magic" in between is the easy part. It is a well proven, fast, cheep (free in the instance of steem) and reliable technology.
I work online and most of my money comes from online sources. Having to transfer using banks has been hell on my income because of the fee, plus the ridiculous extra cost of "fast transfer" which, oddly enough, it seems like i must pay for my money to reach at all! I am literally biting my nails waiting for crypto's to become mainstream so i can escape this wretched hold the systems of ancient times has on me.
Peço licença ao @exyle e vou aproveitar o post com a pesença de pessoas que falam portugues para fazer um convite para melhorar a comunidade de lingua portuguesa por aqui.
Há cerca de um ano atrás, quando o Steemit foi lançado eu criei este grupo no Facebook na esperança de identifcar com mais facilidade membros da comunidade de lingua portuguesa no Steemit. Tem sido difícil conseguir engajamento na nossa lingua e também tenho dificuldade de encontrar conteúdo de qualidade em português.
Se alguém tiver interesse de ajudar, entra em contato que tenho grandes planos para usar o Steemit com platataforma de monetização para escritores em início de carreira.
Enfim, participem do grupo e compartilhe seu conteúdo lá: https://www.facebook.com/steemitbr/?ref=bookmarks
Grande abraço!
I'm waiting on Viva-cash to become operational. You'll be able to TEXT your transfer. From what I gather, it doesn't even require a smartphone. If you can send/receive text, then it'll work.
I have no problem sticking it to the banks. They're a menace.