[zmgsabst]

I use crypto for exchange between friends (US + EU) and myself (SE Asia).

Our options are IBAN (slow!), WesternUnion (fees, denials, hassles) or crypto (10min, cheap). We chose crypto - because it’s the practical path from their bank to mine. CashApp and Coinbase interface with my actual bank accounts, on my end.

If you don’t do international banking, then much of the utility is diminished — so I’m not surprised by your perspective. But once you try to move money between continents, even with ID and documentation, you’ll understand that Coinbase is a godsend.

[handle584]

This actually applies to the US as well. Anytime you need to send $1k+ to a stranger the process is a pain in the ass.

> ACH, most bank does not allow send to stranger, and it takes 1~3 days for settlement among those which allow.

> Wire, expensive ~$30 per transaction.

> Paypal/Venmo/CashApp, Schrödinger's fraud trigger you never know it's gonna work or not. Plus they report to IRS so more paperwork during tax season.

> A lot of banks report every transaction of your checking account to credit bureaus.

So stable coin is my preferred way, and luckily among my circle it is widely accepted. Any amount is instant with a few cents at most.

[toomuchtodo]

I use Wise often to move money between USD, EUR, and AUD, and it plugs right into my US credit union and brokerage accounts. International transfers settle in under a minute to Australian and European bank accounts in my experience.

[stevenjgarner]

When you send USD to an AUD account via Wise, no money actually travels between the US and Australia. Wise maintains massive pools of local currency in bank accounts all over the world. When you deposit USD, it goes into Wise’s US bank account. Wise's software detects the deposit and instantly triggers an internal payout from Wise's Australian bank account to the recipient's AUD account. Because Wise is using local banking networks on both ends (like FedNow or RTP in the US, SEPA Instant in Europe, and NPP/Osko in Australia), the transfer can settle in seconds. It’s essentially a matching engine, not an international wire.

Credit risk and identity dictate the speed of the funding step. If you stripped KYC out of the equation entirely, the bottleneck wouldn't just be speed — the legacy banking system would refuse to route the transaction at all.

It is important to distinguish that you are fundamentally involved in a credit network, pulling funds not pushing funds, that just gives the illusion of speed. For verified users, the sub-minute speed is a mix of local real-time banking rails and Wise extending short-term trust that the incoming funds won't bounce. For an unverified or high-risk user, Wise forces a holding period until the money physically clears, dragging the process back down to standard banking speeds.

[whiplash451]

Aren’t there fees to convert fiat from/to crypto on both ends?

[mothballed]

You can make the fees rather than pay them if you make the market. There are decentralized exchanges where this can be done ~trivially for even low amounts. The fees are for those who want instant gratification.

[zmgsabst]

Yes — there’s fees converting from/to fiat and when sending the crypto.

You’ll generally have the conversion slippage and transaction fee regardless - so the difference is the second conversion.

In practice, that isn’t too expensive and worth it for the speed; though that may change if you’re sending larger or smaller amounts than I am (in $1k-10k range).

Edit:

Replying by edit due to rate limits — but subcontracting and personal loans, eg, until a client pays.

Being a consultant is hard; being a consultant with no support network is harder.

[mock-possum]

I’m curious - under what circumstances are you exchanging $1k-$10k with friends internationally?

[Nursie]

Or a service like Wise which is cheap and takes a few minutes most of the time.

Never had much of a need for other services when transferring across the globe.

[michaelscott]

They're not available everywhere, and the neo-banks in general are tightening their processes to a point where they're becoming difficult to use. I've had multiple situations now where Revolut denied things like a tap payment at a restaurant in NYC because it was an "unknown recipient". Of course they don't notify you of it, leading to an awkward 5 mins with the waiter while I rummage through the app to figure out why I can't use my own money this time. Fast and convenient it ain't

[dboreham]

I suspect parent is using "a service like Wise" even though they believe they're using Crypto. That's because for an end to end transaction to complete in under 10 minutes it has to be performed by an exchange (not actually settled on chain). There are many cases like this where the "crypto" part is just theater. Money is being moved the tradition way by altering records in a non-distributed database.