[aianus]

> Just give me one good economic use case outside of illegal markets for cryptocurrencies that is better than current technological solutions.

Transfer $1000 from your Coinbase (or other electronic) account in the US to cash in Indonesia, in less than 20 minutes, at a better rate than spot. I did it yesterday with ETH and even made $20 on the spread after all the fees.

The cheapest conventional alternative would have been a Visa or Plus ATM card which would have cost around $14-$47 depending on how good your card is.

[mrep]

You may have found one temporary use case but I don't expect that to last if cryptocurrencies gain in value.

How much did it cost to exchange USD -> crypto -> Indonesia money?

[aianus]

I used limit orders to add liquidity in both countries and so paid no trading fees. There was a 1% “cash withdrawal fee” at the Indonesian exchange which is all I paid in total.

I don’t know how temporary it will be; I’ve been using crypto to transfer money internationally since 2013 when BTC was $800 and it’s always been the cheapest method (although I sometimes had to write bots and wait a few days to get a good deal). I imagine the spreads will continue to trend towards zero so I’ll be paying 0-1.5% total instead of earning 2% which is still much better than banks for three-figure to low four-figure amounts.