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
https://www.steemnow.com/
Excellent, very good content greetings I follow you. I love you happy day, if it is your pleasure I invite you to visit my profile I am a girl lover of life and love I hope your participation until later
FACEBOOK ||| @janmarieth ||| STEEMIT VENEZUELA
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
@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!
@blocktrades i promote you in Philippines tag in order to help my fellow Filipinos to there transaction using blocktrades at minimum of 16sbd...kindly see my post ..need badly your support to upvote my post..to bring in to trending so that my fellow Filipinos will see it.please help me to promote blocktrades on ph. community here @steemit.com
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
wow what a animation
Thanks
Do you own Bitcoin? Learn which altcoins are giving away free money to Bitcoin holders.
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...
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.
Thank you, this is a useful reminder to check transaction fees before withdrawing.
"since just about every other coin has much cheaper transaction fees" (than Bitcoin)
This sure is a sad state of affairs for a coin that was regularly supposed to increase the block-size, given the "scaling" deadlines having passed.
Where is the "hero" that we never wanted?
thanks for this helpful advice!
I want to ask because I sent 5 SBD to blocktrades, my 5 SBD is only worth 0.00013139 BTC??
Blocktrades also charges a fee which seems to be larger on small amounts. For example, here are the numbers right now I see.
10 SBD = 0.00137956 BTC
100 SBD = 0.02043332 BTC
1000 SBD = 0.20694816 BTC
Therefore the best rate is given currently out of those three when sending 1000 SBD with the payout for 10 SBD to 100 SBD which is 10 times more actually coming out to 14 times more. For this reason, I have asked Blocktrades to please be transparent about the exact exchange rate and the fee taken to help us understand how to best make our exchanges. Send at least 100 SBD at once to get the best rate!
Currently SBD is valued at less than one dollar due to market forces. And sometimes the fee for us to send a bitcoin transaction costs more than $5 USD now (it's a fluctuating fee with bitcoin network congestion and the current value of bitcoin)... This is why I wrote this post to encourage use of other coins when converting to fiat right now.
okay one more thing, I lost a 5 SBD earlier none came into my receivers wallet and it wasn't refunded back into my steemit wallet? how can I recover it?
I can't refund it because we were able to send the bitcoin in your case. But most of the funds were eaten up by the fixed cost of sending the bitcoin. I strongly recommend using 20 SBD or more if you're buying bitcoin right now.
@blocktrades thanx for u info.. i want to know one more think how much minimum SDB Transaction possible with Blocktrade???
It varies, but it's probably around 6 or 7 SBD today. But it's not a good idea to send such a small amount now, because most of if it would just go to paying the fixed bitcoin transaction fee and you would get very little bitcoin . That's why I recommend using a minimum of 20 SBD (and even more if you have it).
If you want to see the minimum amount at any given time, you can put 0.000001 into the "Receive" amount of the estimator on our web page. Currently it's estimating you would need to send 6.76 SBD, for example to get this very small amount of bitcoin.
Please help me with my introduction.
You are very kind to help upvote in steemit. And I beg for your help master @blocktrades
This is my article tonight
( Amazing hand painting on red roses )
@blocktrades
You make a very good post mister @blocktrades
Please help me upvote+follow @balcheng
Please help my intro.
I am new in steemit I am very fan to master
Please help me and you are very kind to steemit users and you are the kindest in steemit master @blocktrades
( New arrivals ) Please support my introduction, I just joined in steemit @blocktrades
Yes thanks @blocktrades
I have previously had transactions as you described this.
But that is a problem in transactions, when I send steem to bitcoin.com often late. Then the sender's side suffered a slight loss. Because at the time the transaction price has been adjusted. When the transaction process is slow, then the risk for the sender.
Thanks @blocktrades has given you new instructions.
Yes, using a faster cryptocurrency like Litecoin or Ethereum will reduce the chance for a loss (or a gain) in the value of the intermediary currency. So the faster the transaction speed of the intermediary currency, the more predictability of the final amount of fiat obtained.
I want your support, so I can work, and steemian friends help me ,,, thanks @blocktrades
Pretty simple once you explain it like that lol
Thanks for the information!
I did this the other day from coinbase to blocktrade using bitcoin but what your saying is it would of been cheaper using ethereum or litecoin, I'll know better next time, cheers
Thanks for all your good work. I love how simple and easy it is to use @blocktrades resteemed
@blocktrades - I have always wondered about the best way to convert my Steem to Fiat. As you have correctly pointed out, the transaction fees for bitcoin are so high that I have been looking for alternate ways. So far, I could not find any suitable exchange though. I believe CEX.IO allows trading in ETH-USD. Am planning to check that out.
Am wondering if it would not be possible for Blocktrades to provide the service, at a fee, to convert SBD to USD/Euro?
Thanks for this update. It is really addressing a topic of general concern for a lot of newcomers.
Regards,
We've recently started looking into what it will take for us to support sending USD/Euro. The primary issue is we will need to obtain a money transmission license and set up the necessary software to support KYC/AML requirements for such transactions.
@blocktrades - Yes - I imagine that some form of financial control authority will then get involved. That is not so good for a decentralized currency based platform but I guess if the influence is kept limited then it would be a great service for Steemians to use
I am a relative newcomer to Steemit and am still trying to learn a lot of things. Therefore, I may not understand all the issues that you experts understand but I surely appreciate all the efforts you are putting in for providing support to Steemit in various ways. Kudos.
I am so happy to be interacting with the legendary @blocktrades. Us newbies can only hope to catch a glimpse of you sometimes and count our blessings if you happen to see one of our blogs. :)
Cheers. Wish you a great day.
@blocktrades service is always impeccable @vm2904
Aren't there several exchanges trading ETH-USD and LTC USD? At least I have used Coinbase to buy ETH and LTC with Euros and it would be quite odd if they didn't have the equivalent USD pairs.
Thanks for posting. Good info.
wow good instructions
@blocktrades, I'm sure Steem would be a lot less successful without your services. I think I need wallets with litecoin or etherereum.
Thank you for the super hot tip. I will keep that in mind when I cash out one day. Not soon though. :)
Nice and easy! Thanks for the advice
Why would anyone want fiat? 😏
Heh, well it's an unfortunate reality that we all still need some fiat. If nothing else, we need it to pay taxes.
I sent u guys $4.20 worth of steem and u only sent me .66 cents worth of bitcoin. U charge over 80% surcharge ? Wtf?
Try reading the post, this post was mainly written to answer such questions.
But, reading is hard. It's much easier to just comment blindly.
Dead space I read it u fucking asshole. It did not answer my question u prick
It certainly partially answered your question and the rest could have been answered if you provided more accurate info.
I decided to look up the transaction you're complaining, and here's what actually occurred:
You sent 4.049 SBD (not $4.20 worth of Steem as you said). At the time we received it, that SBD was worth 3.61 USD (according to coinmarketcap.com). We then sent you 0.68 USD worth of Bitcoin (again the price is coming from coinmarketcap). So what cost most of the difference between 3.61 USD and 0.68 USD? Primarily our estimated cost of the bitcoin transaction at the time of the transaction. Bitcoin transactions are extremely expensive right now, hence I wrote this post to suggest avoiding them if you're just going to fiat.
Great post. Makes me wonder about the other direction. Been buying 25 steem power for every 75 earned, and about 10 steem power removed from my next purchase. Till now I've done so by using iDeal an supporting bitcoin exchange, using the deposit address provided by @blocktrades to make the bitcoins out to. Guess that bitcoin might also not be the most optimum intermediate curency at the moment to get from iDeal based euro deposit to steem power. Would be cool if @blocktraded could support iDeal directly, but lacking that, guess that using something like dogecoin as intermediate currency would probably be better than bitcoin aththe moment.
Stop buying.
You've already donated enough.
And also read berniesanders' post about what he calls "The Asian Scheme" and some of the replies there.
What you cash in, they cash out.
Your author and curation rewards will not cope with the expected crash in steem price. It is already down almost 50% from its highs, and not a bargain.
Dan and Ned try to liquidate their stake, but they can't do it without crashing it harder.
What you cash in, they cash out.
craig-grant is also looking for a getaway opportunity.
Look at this:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@me-tarzan/bitcoin-bid-to-buy-steem-numbers-falling
And no, it is not because poloniex like me-tarzan wants you to believe.
You should follow his blog, not his opinion and advise.
He has a good data-collecting bot.
One result of "The Asian Scheme" is the reward pool being raped as they say.
I think that compared to many other crypto currencies that are basically just monetized global warming, and fiat currency that are basically monetized debt, steem value, at least for a large part is "great content", and if people who treat it differently "pull out" while reducing the direct monetary value will in the long run also reduce the amount of voting-circle crap content and further increase the "great content" to steem market capetalisation ratio.
For me, writing fiction and self-publishing that fiction as free e-books is a hobby and at the moment steemit is helping me both fund that hobby and improve the quality of my work by allowing me to take part in the steem ecconomy. I'm giving the steemit early access to my work in progress and I am making some steem and SBD that I can than later use to solicit valuable input by running review and beta reading contests and loteries that help improve my quality of work further. And given that I believe in a great content based ecconomy, I aim for a 75% 25% split for my steem power. That is, I'm investing 25 steem power for every 75 steem power my fiction writing brings in. That really isn't a huge buy in in fiat currency terms as 75% of my investment is providing what I hope is good content to the platform.
I am hoping this makes some sense and it makes sense that people pulling out should be good for the quality of the platform in the long run. A great-content based ecconomy should be way better than a monetized global warming based ecconomy afaics and certainly better than a debt based ecconomy.
I agree with you about "monetized global warming" about Proof-of-Work, but there are also Proof-of-Stake, and Proof-of-_____ (insert other assurance mechanisms) currencies, so not all are monetized global warming.
Not every crypto is a PoW.
Regarding "the debt", I advise you hear some Warren Mosler about his Modern-Monetary-Theory.
I don't agree with everything he says, yet still he is more truthful and less misleading than the gold and silver and debt doomsday crowd.
I am for disbanding central banks in their current common model.
Cryptos are fiat as well.
I hope you will rethink my previous comment, and stop monetizing spammers that joined this platform only to take out of it.
I too joined in intention to benefit myself, and when possible and appropriate, particular (only those deserving!) others too, and putting fiat into another fiat asset that is being inflated as well, and is bound to keep plunging in value (barring a few spikes due to a few rich and dim-witted individuals) is not benefiting myself, and yes benefiting mostly the serial mass spammers, whom never put anything valuable into this place, not content-wise, not maintenance-wise, and not cash-value-wise.
They only overload the blockchain and make its maintenance impossible sooner than without them.
Have your work backed up, make your public profiles at other portals visible, so your few real followers can find you once this one goes lights out, and please consider stopping monetizing pyramid schemes and monetized spamming, even if you think you can afford it.
Oh, and George Donnelly www.youtube.com/user/georgedonnelly , a fiction writer like you, and a former steemian with quite a bit knowledge about it changed his mind about it from enthusiastic to dismissive.
Just watch how much content he uploaded to youtube about it, so I bet he could tell you why it is bad.
He is very nice and responsive, so you should find the point where he changed his mind, and if you have question left after then, he probably will tell you why it's bad.
And recently I read that both jerrybanfield and I think blocktrades or another user recommended using Ethereum or LiteCoin as an intermediate instead of BTC, due to lower transaction fees, but stopping wasting your cash is still better than wasting it more efficiently.
It's quite possible you could get a better deal in the other direction as well, as you suggest.
I would like to be as influential as you friend to support the growing community of Latin America, I would like to have more steem power :(
Woooo.. that is take long
Tried a couple of options incl. BTC, ETH, LTC and XRP. Most efficient seems to be Litecoin. Cheapest and fastest.
I change my btc to steem use blokctrades side and i shared tutorial in my post for new steemian, how they can exchange bitcoin to steem or steem power
hey i transferred some steem to you but i didn't received any bitcoin in my wallet
I love your service and use it for my daily transactions with bitshares...keep it up
@blocktrades Could you please add bitUSD in "Receive" column using SBD/bitUSD pair? Thank so much!
I have not understood the basic differences of the two crypto currencies, after you post this, I will try to study ETH (ethereum), thanks @blocktrades for the info, I @muhammadikbal liked your post
Yes you are right @blocktrades, ETH is more effective (faster and easier and also cheaper) ..
I think that's it.
I will try it, after reading your writing, i become more sure.
Thank you @blocktrades ! It's an awesome post! but I have a question :
What's make the transaction fees increase or decrease? is it the price of the coin? Why we can't have like a stable transaction fees even if the price of a coin fluctuates ?
The bitcoin transaction fee varies for two reasons: 1) the price of bitcoin itself, because the fee is paid in bitcoin and 2) the amount of bitcoin to pay the fee isn't really a flat fee. The way bitcoin works, miners who create the next bitcoin block only have a certain amount of space in the block to fit transactions.
Nowadays, due to the number of bitcoin transactions being created, a miner can't usually fit all the current pending transactions into the next block so they prioritize the transactions they put into their block based on the fee paid by the transaction (because the miner gets the fees for all the transactions he can include in his block). So if you want your transaction to be processed quickly (i.e. to be included in the next bitcoin block), you can tell your wallet to pay a higher fee and increase the likelihood of your transaction being one of the lucky ones to get into the very next block. But it's essentially a competition between all the other people doing bitcoin transactions, so there's no guarantee about how much you should pay as a fee to get your transaction processed as soon as possible.
To travel STEEM to Bitcoin only takes 30-60 minutes. It's already 12 hours more, but the deposit has not gone into my bitcoin account @blocktrades. Explanation please.
and also thank you for your upvote like 3 weeks ago!! love you long time for that !! keep it up
cheers
@blocktrades
I also see it that way, I also keep it some ETH for future investment, this information makes me more confident for ETH
Thanks
@blocktrades is very dependable. And @blocktrades is an active upvoter of mega whale proportions on steemit. I much prefer @blocktrades. I used them the other day and everything went very smoothly.
Thank you @blocktrades for your services to the steemit community.
Great information here. Resteemed and upvoted.