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Comment by redox99 | Hacker News Reader

> Also there’s significant cost converting to and from fiat to take it out

No there's not. Trades on exchanges are under 0.1% [1]. ERC20 tokens have some fees because of gas but it's a flat amount [2], which is negligible for any operation over a thousand dollars. Fiat withdrawals are generally free [3]. The most expensive part usually is the gas to interact with the DeFi smart contract, but it's also a flat fee.

[1] https://help.ftx.com/hc/en-us/articles/360024479432-Fees

[2] https://etherscan.io/gastracker 0.75USD as of now, but it can reach like 10USD when the network is congested.

[3] https://help.ftx.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043023772-Depositi...

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> Trades on exchanges are under 0.1%

Let's say I am the type of person who needs a cheap loan, and I decide to use Coinbase. My understanding is that money into Coinbase and money out of Coinbase is going to cost me 1.49% (at least) in each direction, and that's before the additional $1-$10 gas fees in each direction. So 3% + currency risks + whatever other fees + the risk of fat-fingering my crypto and losing it to the ether forever, and also trying to figure out if I have some kind of tax liability, BEFORE the actual interest rate itself.

Or I choose a well-regulated provider to do a money-transfer[0] to and pay a one-off fee of 3-4% for several thousand pounds for a year or longer loan, even if my credit isn't perfect, and I do that with the full protection of the legal system, including bankruptcy protection, easy resolution if I type the wrong account number in, etc. Those are the rates for if I need cash too, if the thing I need to pay for can be paid for by credit-card, the rate falls to closer to 2%...

[0] https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/credit-cards/money-transfe...

Coinbase is basically a noob trap. By adding the pro word alone (using pro.coinbase.com) you get like an order of magnitude cheaper fees already.

I already provided sources for the fees with another exchange.

> negligible for any operation over a thousand dollars.

So, useless on a day to day use for any normal person that's not a Silicon Valley tech bro, understood.

The topic was about loans. How often do you need a loan for under 1k dollars?

Extremely often if you're not wealthy? Borrowing money from family to pay for car repairs, from friends for various purchases, from your bank whenever there's even a little thing you hadn't expected and you do not have money aside.

Which is, you know, 90+% of the world

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