[sorbits]

> And settlement happens in seconds to a couple minutes

That is incorrect. On average it takes 10 minutes to mine a block, but you have to submit the transaction to be included in the block, so > 10 minutes before it appears on the blockchain.

However, there are actually many block chains, as miners creates block in parallel, it’s the longest one that is the “official”, but the minute you see your transaction in a block, you do not know if this block will stay in the longest chain, so in general you want at least 5 new blocks, after your block, before it is considered “safe”.

So now we are talking about one hour to do a transaction, and that assumes that the network is not overloaded, because there is also a cap on number of transactions that can be included in a block.

All in all, it is a terrible system for fast transactions.

[jkepler]

But how quickly does SWIFT or ACH settle? When one wires money overseas, settlement is counted in days, not minutes or hours as in bitcoin's case. Most of us use layer 2 or 3 solutions in our legacy national currency systems, such as Cash App, PayPal, Venmo, etc. Non elite don't have access directly to FedWire or ACH or SWIFT... it all has to pass through banks and other 'trusted third parties.'

Also, eventually most lower-value transactions in bitcoin will be on layer two technologies, like the lightning network (peer to peer) or liquid bitcoin (federated peer to peer, mostly for exchanges and traders to quickly move funds between exchanges).

[zhte415]

It doesn't take days. RTGS is named rhat for a reason.

If you're also doing FX that'll be minutes for major currencies. Should you be going through a network of correspondence banks from obscure bank to obscure bank it might be longer but even then rarely days. If currency controls some dalay depending on regulatory setup. Even if the banks do netting, cheaper than RTGS, that should be just a couple of hours between reasonably large banks.

What you may have is a problem with your bank or it using ACH.

[tomca32]

I live and work in the US, but originally I'm from Croatia. I wire money every month to my family back there.

It takes 5 work days for the wire to fully clear. Since 5 days is a full work week, it almost always bleeds over to the weekend and in reality takes 7 days.

BTC might still be a terrible system for international transactions but it's still 168 times faster than the one that exists now.

[sorbits]

> BTC might still be a terrible system for international transactions but it's still 168 times faster than the one that exists now.

It is 168 times faster than what you currently use.

There are services like TransferWise who specialize in fast international money transfers.

I could imagine that part of your delay is because the bank your family use (in Croatia) does not themselves handle international transfers, so they go through an intermediary bank, only adding delays.

I have often done ~12 hours international wires from Wells Fargo (U.S.) to Asia, and here the delay could simply have been due to the time zone.

Within the European Monetary Zone I often see money arrive in 10-30 minutes (crossing borders).

[tomca32]

That's a fair comment. I don't use Transferwise, rather just wire money via Chase Bank to an IBAN account. You are right that there is an intermediary bank involved in the process.

Also yes, within Europe, an IBAN to IBAN transfer is pretty much instantaneous. However US is not in the IBAN system, so that's a different story.

There are probably multiple reasons why the transfer takes a week, but the spirit of my comment was that an hour long (at worst) transaction time for BTC is actually very fast if you look at it through the international money transfer lens.

[omegaworks]

My worry is that we will continue to see the pace of international money transfers increase as competition, trust and infrastructure improves. Bitcoin, on the other hand, is limited structurally by the very mechanism that guarantees its accuracy. Today miners burn 77Kwh of energy to mine the block that records your transaction[1]. Sure hashing tech might get more efficient, but the block mining complexity increases to keep their discovery rate constant at one every 10 minutes[2]. This does not set a cap on the energy usage of mining for the network.

1. https://www.vice.com/en/article/ywbbpm/bitcoin-mining-electr...

2. https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/

[brianobush]

Staking (for Ethereum 2.0) will be the mechanism over the current proof of work method. This will reduce the energy cost significantly by removing the requirement of mining.

[omegaworks]

How do people plan on transitioning? Bitcoin holders will find themselves unable to transact their coin if miners move to Ethereum en masse.

[brianobush]

I wouldn't consider TransferWise fast. I used to send money to Canada from the US and it took a day or so for verification and settlement.

[africanboy]

honest question: what's the advantage of bitcoins over amazon gift cards (or any other prepaid credit)?

they are immediate, cheap and can be exchanged for real money for free.

[tomca32]

I don't know. I never tried doing that. Amazon is pretty useless in Croatia so that probably wouldn't work, but there might be some prepaid cards that would.

I don't know, haven't explored that option honestly.

[FalconSensei]

Awesome, go to the supermarket, pay with BTC and wait there for an hour for your transaction to complete.

Or try to buy anything time/quantity limited, so you don't get it because the transaction took too long to complete.

Meanwhile, in Canada, I just do a money transfer by email without any fees (if sending more than $10), and it's almost instant if the receiver have auto-deposit set up.

[sizzle]

Why would you have to wait an hour? A credit card isn't instant? Isn't there some level of trust involved here?

[imtringued]

You won't have to wait an hour because MasterCard will support Bitcoin. However, this completely goes against the idea of decentralization.

[faffe]

Actually the article mention " select crypto" but not the BTC.

And to be honest I do not see the point for them to support a decentralised currency like. just complying with the regulatory rules ( KYC, anti Money laundering,etc...) Would be a real nightmare

[makruiten]

How does that email system work? Can’t you just do free instant wire transfers in Canada?

[Jtsummers]

Possibly something like Zelle (in the US, not sure where else). Using someone's contact information (phone or email) you can send money to them quickly and easily. They can set it up with whichever bank and change it as they desire, no banking information never needs to be communicated between the two parties.