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Are they international? If so you can bet someone (such as a bank) is taking a cut somewhere on the offered exchange rate.

EDIT: I just looked and Dwolla is US only.

I mean, there's a % taken from every bitcoin transaction as well, it's just a question of which fee is lower, BTC or dwolla.

I think the bitcoin fee is optional? or at least doesn't apply in many cases?

peers may offer to process bitcoin transactions for free, and the original paper posits there are always going to be participants who will.