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Comment by ipython | Hacker News Reader

What international bank transfer costs “thousands” of dollars to complete? What ethereum transaction only costs 3% to complete? Are you saying that a retailer accepting crypto will suddenly no longer need to “eat” the transaction costs because… crypto?

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Every transfer service has transfer limits. Have you ever tried to send $1M or $10M internationally? What service provider would you go through to execute the transaction? What are their fees? Not only will your transaction be delayed as much as weeks, you'll have additional forms to fill out and fees and expenses associated with such a transfer. Even more so if you are converting to another currency.

On Ethereum, you can execute a swap from one currency to another (0.3% fee) and have the transfer execute to anyone in the world in 15 seconds. Even in a highly congested time on the network, that will cost at most a few dozen dollars. Doesn't matter if you're sending $1K or $1B.

Crypto isn't ready for retail use cases yet, but it's within the next few years (less than 3) that it gets there. Retail transactions will occur on rollups. The retailers will pay transaction fees of a few pennies to a few dozen cents. It will not be percentage based on the transaction value as VISA, AMEX, etc currently get away with.

Any sufficiently large transaction costs less than 3% on Ethereum. MetaMask claims a transfer would cost me 63 cents, so a pure Eth transfer of more than $22 for example. Though of course you can do it a lot cheaper on L2s.

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