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Comment by askonomm | Hacker News Reader

Sending money from one EU bank to another costs nothing at all.

There are no bank fees in the EU? In the US, most accounts need to maintain a minimum balance, otherwise they get hit with a monthly fee. Then there's the whole state and banking bureaucracy to deal with in setting up an account in the first place (citizenship, identification, paperwork, etc.) Whether it's hidden in fees or taxes a bank is not a charity so I doubt it costs "nothing at all".

Some banks charge "maintenance" fees monthly, usually some cents, afaik. But there are also banks that don't charge anything at all. Fact of the matter is that banks don't make their money on your account maintenance fees or sign-up fees, they make their money by investing YOUR money, so effectively the balance you see on your account might not actually be there, and is allocated for you only when you withdraw. That's how banks work, afaik. That being said, money transfer as such from one EU bank to another doesn't cost anything at all.

Also, opening bank accounts these days is done entirely online and usually you get approved within an hour or so. Apart from having to scan my ID with my phone's camera, I don't remember any bureaucracy.

How about $1 billion? Irreversibly, in 30 mins, for 10 cents? Doubt it.

Irreversibly sounds awful lol. However, that aside, how many people do you know with this particular problem? Have you ever run into an issue transferring $1,000,000,000? Has anyone you know ever run into that issue?

It depends on your bank, SEPA generally has a limit of €999,999,999.99, so no technically you cant send a full billion…

SEPA transfers have a 100k limit for instant transfer (much less than 30min, I never timed but I've never seen it even take a full 1min).

$1 billion would take a day to clear, but it would still be 100% free.

Irreversibility of such a transaction would be ridiculous for all parties involved, of course they don't offer that.

I always find it funny how the crypto fanboy counter-argument is something so edge-case that it would never happen to 99% of people. So you're saying that to benefit from crypto I should be a billionaire?

99% is actually generous lol. There's 2,200 US dollar billionaires globally, and if you're sending $1B you probably have at least $2B which is going to narrow down the problem space pretty significantly. However, being generous, that's a problem that 99.99997% of the world cannot by definition have.

Maybe crypto just isn't for us plebs. On the other hand when I get paid my salary I can be pretty damn sure it still has enough value to be able to pay my bills even a year from now. With crypto I don't think I could even get a good nights sleep not knowing if my money is worth 50% less tomorrow, or 50% more. I also tend to lose things a lot, which with a regular bank is no problem, I just call support and show my ID or what-not, but with crypto I would end up homeless, and those conveniences are very much worth the tiny bank fees if you ask me.

Who on earth has such requirement? If you need to move $1 billion, higher fees or slower times are negligible problems.

There may not be a price directly associated with the transaction, but it certainly has a cost. The fact that the cost is externalized does not eliminate it.

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