First experience with crypto.

[alanrchase]

Decided to give it a go. Downloaded an app and went through the verification. Passport picture, driving licence, visa/extension, face etc. Stumbled with the driving licence as it wanted both sides but wasn't giving the option to photograph the back side but it eventually gave the option. All approved so transfered some money into the account via mobile banking which was easy. Converted some of that to Bitcoin and decided to try an online payment using that. This is where the problem started. The vendor gives a page with the bitcoin amount to pay and the wallet address to send it to. The wallet on the app has boxes to enter the amount and the address, easy enough with copy and paste. Couple of verification steps and transaction is confirmed. What I didn't realise is the crazy way the transaction fee is taken. It comes out of the amount you are trying to send not out of your account. The app transfers the money but the vendor says the transaction was not completed. Vendor does not decline the transaction for being the incorrect amount and there is no way to get your money back. Seems you have to manually add the transaction fee to the amount you want to send to make sure the vendor gets the correct amount. I am out of pocket but both the vendor and crypto exchange have made money. Fortunately it was a small amount.

[Dazinoz]

4 hours ago, alanrchase said:

Decided to give it a go. Downloaded an app and went through the verification. Passport picture, driving licence, visa/extension, face etc. Stumbled with the driving licence as it wanted both sides but wasn't giving the option to photograph the back side but it eventually gave the option. All approved so transfered some money into the account via mobile banking which was easy. Converted some of that to Bitcoin and decided to try an online payment using that. This is where the problem started. The vendor gives a page with the bitcoin amount to pay and the wallet address to send it to. The wallet on the app has boxes to enter the amount and the address, easy enough with copy and paste. Couple of verification steps and transaction is confirmed. What I didn't realise is the crazy way the transaction fee is taken. It comes out of the amount you are trying to send not out of your account. The app transfers the money but the vendor says the transaction was not completed. Vendor does not decline the transaction for being the incorrect amount and there is no way to get your money back. Seems you have to manually add the transaction fee to the amount you want to send to make sure the vendor gets the correct amount. I am out of pocket but both the vendor and crypto exchange have made money. Fortunately it was a small amount.

Guess a good way to try it but seems a waste of money for small transactions considering exchange and blockchain fees.

 

I assume you are short vendors cost by the blockchain fee? Why cant you just send this amount to complete transaction? Obviously fees on that too. Some transfers via blockchain deduct total amount including fee but others do what happened to you where they transfer the amount you say and fee is taken from that.

 

I have done a few transfers from exchanges to cold storage to exchanges, etc. Bitcoin fees a little high and from the limited amounts I have done with Etherium they charge ridiculous "gas" fees. I mostly have the triple X rated coins, i.e. XRP, XLM and XDC. Their fees are very very low and extremely fast. Transferred some from my cold wallet to Australian exchange other day and there in less than a minute.

 

I don't think I have actually bought anything with crypto.

[4MyEgo]

4 hours ago, alanrchase said:

I am out of pocket but both the vendor and crypto exchange have made money. Fortunately it was a small amount.

 

Your a brave man, I buy BTC as an ETF as it saves me the 1% fee to buy it and lower price when selling on the exchange, on top of the 1% fee for selling it.

 

 

[oxo1947]

16 minutes ago, Dazinoz said:

. Bitcoin fees a little high and from the limited amounts I have done

who gets the fee's.................. Sorry I am a Bit-con blond

[patman30]

19 minutes ago, oxo1947 said:

who gets the fee's.................. Sorry I am a Bit-con blond

fees are paid to miners
a fee that you pay
will be paid to the miner that produces the block that includes your transaction
BTC is handicapped at 1MB block (up to 4MB with segwit)
due to this BTC has a fee market, where people compete with higher fees to get their transactions confirmed in a block quicker
when the network is busy people will pay higher and higher fees to get confirmed (like an auction)
BTC can only confirm/process 500k transactions a day
which makes it completely useless as a global currency
coreturds will jump in and scream "lightning, lightning, lightning" which is a centralized POS that does not work anyway,
and even if lightning did actually work, it would take over 40 years just to onboard everyone without any other transactions happening.
The only thing most AN members need to know or care about is
number go up, and number go down.

 

 

[alanrchase]

34 minutes ago, Dazinoz said:

Guess a good way to try it but seems a waste of money for small transactions considering exchange and blockchain fees.

 

I assume you are short vendors cost by the blockchain fee? Why cant you just send this amount to complete transaction? Obviously fees on that too. Some transfers via blockchain deduct total amount including fee but others do what happened to you where they transfer the amount you say and fee is taken from that.

 

I have done a few transfers from exchanges to cold storage to exchanges, etc. Bitcoin fees a little high and from the limited amounts I have done with Etherium they charge ridiculous "gas" fees. I mostly have the triple X rated coins, i.e. XRP, XLM and XDC. Their fees are very very low and extremely fast. Transferred some from my cold wallet to Australian exchange other day and there in less than a minute.

 

I don't think I have actually bought anything with crypto.

I was having issues with my debit card so thought I would try bitcoin. Totally agree that it is an expensive way to transfer small amounts of money. I only put a small amount of money in and will only be using it for emergencies. The issue with my debit card has been sorted.

[JBChiangRai]

I don’t see BiTCoin as a currency but more as Digital Gold, a store of value.

[ukrules]

3 hours ago, JBChiangRai said:

I don’t see BiTCoin as a currency but more as Digital Gold, a store of value.

Agreed, there are much cheaper alternative crypto currencies to make quick and simple payments with, Litecoin for example.

Most exchanges give you the option to deduct the fee from your account balance instead of the amount transferred.

Also exchanges often charge vastly inflated transaction fees so the best way is to withdraw it all in one transaction and then spend it from an external wallet - not directly from the exchange - that is much cheaper and you have full control over fees, in fact depending on the wallet you can set your own fee which may affect how long the transaction takes to 'confirm'