How to convert Steem/SBD to USD/Euro more efficiently
A lot of BlockTrades' customers who want to get USD or Euros will sell their Steem to https://blocktrades.us for Bitcoin (BTC), then sell their BTC on an exchange that supports fiat (USD/Euro) withdrawals. In principal, this is an OK methodology, but due to the high price of Bitcoin and the resulting increase in the transaction fee charged by the Bitcoin network, this isn't the most efficient way to convert your Steem to fiat dollars.
If you can find an exchange where you can sell either Litecoin or Ethereum for fiat, it's cheaper to buy Litecoin or Ethereum from BlockTrades, then sell those coins for fiat on the exchange, because the transaction fee charged by these networks is much, much lower.
This is particular important if you are sending relatively small amounts of Steem or SBD, because we have to pass along to our customers the cost we incur for sending them the bitcoin.
In some cases, the customer sends in an amount so small that it doesn't even cover the cost of sending the bitcoin to them. In this case, our system will display the message: permanent_output_failure_input_too_small. This error can easily be avoided by doing one of two things: 1) selecting a different output coin from bitcoin since just about every other coin has much cheaper transaction fees or 2) sending in reasonably large amounts of Steem or SBD to reduce the impact of the fixed cost of sending the bitcoin. Method 1) is generally your best option for getting to fiat, but if you can't get an account on an exchange that supports anything but BTC to fiat, then 2) is a reasonable option for combatting the cost of the bitcoin transaction fee.
Another advantage of using Litecoin or Ethereum for converting to fiat is speed: both of these coins confirm faster than bitcoin does.
EDIT: I wanted to clarify that the above recommendations are just for customers whose ultimate goal is a fiat currency like USD or Euro.
I don't mean this post as an encouragement to invest in Litecoin, Ethereum, or any other altcoin versus Bitcoin: there are many factors that could influence investing in any particular cryptocurrency and I don't plan to weigh in here on which one is best to hold for investment purposes, especially as I think the best coin to invest in can frequently change.
But if you are selling your Steem or other cryptocurrency to invest in Bitcoin on our site, I do recommend you make such purchases with relatively large values relative to the Bitcoin transaction cost. For example, instead of sending in 4 SBD at four different times for bitcoin, save the SBD until you have 16 SBD, then do one transaction on our site for the Bitcoin. This will save you the cost of 3 bitcoin transaction fees.
We at adsactly love blocktrades infact whatever SteemPower that we have right now was bought from Blocktrades thank @blocktrades for creating such a wonderful platform. discord.me/adsactly
Hello...
There is something I do not understand if you can be explained please . Voting value: For example, if I owned 1000 Steem Power, how much would the upvote be? Thank you
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Ditto
@adsactly I definitely agree with you in that @blocktrades is a great platform for exchanges. This post indeed shows their believe in freedom and their aim to help people save money, and improve their transaction method in terms of time and costs. Just upvoted the comment and post. Regards, @gold84
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@blocktrades I love your website so much I made a tutorial about it on Steem and a video tutorial on YouTube.
Would you please show the exact exchange rate and the blocktrades fee on each transaction because that is what would keep me coming back as a customer? For example, when I change Steem to ETH I can see the total I am going to get but I cannot see how much I am paying because of your fee vs how much I am getting because of the exchange rate. Bittrex and Changelly have been my choices recently because I know exactly what I am paying in the exchange rate and transaction fees.
Blocktrades is much faster than using an exchange and gives our community here the most support. I would start making exchanges again as a customer if I could see exactly what I was paying! Upvote for visibility.
Our system reports the exact exchange rate for the given input. Our estimator reports exactly how much we will give at a given time for a given amount sent. There's no fees beyond those incorporated into the final estimated amount we compute. I don't know what competitors are doing right now, but generally I think they don't show the fixed fee in their estimators although it can usually be found in their terms of service.
The algorithm we use for the our pricing is quite complicated, so there's no easy way to break out our service fee. We compute the price by first determining the price for us to buy equivalent amount of the output across a bunch of different markets. This price can be above or below coinmarketcap pricing due to available liquidity and selection of market paths we find available to us. This can often be the most significant determiner of how good a price we can offer (it even occasionally generates a negative spread for us, something we need to fix at some point). Then we subtract out the transaction fee we have to pay to send the coin. Typically this wasn't much, but it can now be a very significant cost for bitcoin outputs (and it's what inspired this post). Finally, we charge a percentage based on the particular coin input/output pair and that can be a function of how much volume we're seeing in each direction and how much of each coin we're holding at the time we receive the coin.
All the above is why we don't report some easy "percentage", it just doesn't make sense for our current pricing algorithm. It's something we may change in the future, since some people do seem more interested in the percentage rate than the bottom line.
But right now, we're mostly focused on improving our site to reduce customer support issues, as that's our biggest expense and our target market is maximal ease-of-use, low hassle service. I'm hoping we will be able to update the site in the next couple of weeks to reduce some of the most common issues we see.
Thank you very much for explaining this for our benefit here! Is it possible with your current system for a user to send a lot at once in different currencies to generate a large negative transaction given you are pulling the price from the available liquidity? For example, if someone sent 1000 SBD at the same time for ETH, LTC, BTC, Dash and a few others, would they lock in the higher exchange rate even though the liquidity might not be there?
I appreciate your response and hope what I've shared is useful to avoid getting exploited on the negative spread!
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https://steemit.com/blocktrades/@dontryme2/how-to-trasnfer-your-steemit-steem-dollars-sbd-from-bloctrades-to-coinph-ph-transaction
How Minnow Withdraw Steem/SBD via BlockTrades with Lowest Transaction Fee
https://steemit.com/cn/@beautifulbella/blocktrades-steem-sbd-or-how-minnow-withdraw-steem-sbd-via-blocktrades-with-lowest-transaction-fee
Great tutorial Jerry!
Does blocktrades have a referral program ? I love the service but I need more clarification about fees .
I think it is not a big fees . Blocktrades is the best !
@jerrybanfield and @blocktrades. Your writing is both very useful for me as a beginner in steemit. I follow your writing both. I am from Aceh friend.
Regards
@bukharisulaiman
Great tip. In my mind it's better to go for Bitcoin but I forgot the transaction costs for a moment! So next time for a payout I will go for Litecoin or something.
Useful advice for sure!
This post received a 4.4% upvote from @randowhale thanks to @rkrijgsman! For more information, click here!
@randowhale great. Thanks
I really like your platform. Very convenient and simple. I have a question. Now our team in Ukraine has created a website http://www.steemit.in.ua/ for support, to help Ukrainians and not only to popularize Steemit in Ukraine. The site is still young, we are working and preparing useful content for the site. I would like to link to your site in our site as a useful resource. Is it possible?
Sorry for the delay responding. Sure, you can add a link to our site.
It needed to be said :)
Resteemed !
Very informative post thanks
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Thanks
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Agree, @majes! Sooner or later there will be an efficient and cost-effective exchange that will be worth the conversion whenever and however small amounts you want to exchange.
Thank you for the read, @blocktrades! Well needed information!
I am Resteemed bother.
on the blocktrade.us calculator, if I put 100 SBD to exchange to BTC, does that mean that I should send 100 SBD exactly from the Steem Wallet Transfer?
No, you can send a different amount to us, that calculator is just an estimator so that you know how much we will send you for a given amount. You can always send more or less. But I recommend using the estimator with the amount you plan to send, to reduce the chance for a surprise in the amount you receive.
that is strange... i sent a small amount and got a refund by you, why?
Transfer 2.253 SBD to blocktrades c4fab5ac-4950-4e7a-b8d5-442e3403ac0a
The amount you sent was too small to pay the bitcoin transaction fee. I happened to notice the transaction had failed, so I just manually refunded it. If you really want to buy bitcoin, I would send 30 SBD or so. If you just want to go to fiat, I would use Litecoin or Ethereum as your intermediate coin instead of bitcoin now. Currently bitcoin transactions cost about $5 USD or more.
Thanks, so one more question please: is $5 the cost per bitcoin transaction (regardless the amount)?
Yes, there is a fixed bitcoin fee per transaction regardless of the amount of the transaction, and the fixed fee is currently about $5 USD. It's why I wrote this post, to warn people about this issue when buying, so they don't pay unnecessary fees.
Thanks! OMG, I wished I knew this a lot sooner.. I have wasted so much transaction fees...
The fees weren't so high in the past, but it's gone up a lot for bitcoin recently.
ok... i see. the amount is too small... thanks.
I have recently used blocktrades for the first time to buy some satoshies, and found that your service is not cheap, but is by far fastest and simplest (was on bittrex so far). I have just one suggestion. If you could, put the transaction fee in the estimation before the transaction.
Thank you very much for this beautiful option @blocktrades.
@lighteye thank you for mentioning is because I just requested the same thing. Seeing that you got not reply here, I upvoted both of our comments for visibility!
You are welcome @jerrybanfield.
I use only LTC. :)
This post received a 2.5% upvote from @randowhale thanks to @vysmek! For more information, click here!
How you convert LTC to CZK?
LTC is also very stabile vs USD so i would go that route for small numbers :)
Yes, both Litecoin and Ethereum are good options I think, a lot depends on what exchanges are available to the Steem seller.
I have not received my bitcoin to the bitcoin address I have provided for exchange of steem yet. It's more than 6 hours now. What should I do now?
I received your email that the bitcoin did show up in your wallet, just replying here for anyone interested in the outcome.
me as well, if possible just refund it back to my steemit wallet this is the memo I used to send 5 SBD 66a2843f-2f41-4379-bb50-a470ebf1047a
The bitcoin was already sent here (it has 58 confirmations currently): https://blockchain.info/tx/0e1f30042b706f2872db6293d4dc8f843faa8ea4fe46151824aa104544ba58cc
If you don't see it in your bitcoin wallet, it's probably out of sync. If you're using an exchange, check with your exchange provider.
Also, please use our email support address for support issues, it's answered much more efficiently reliably than posts here.