PRIMER: How to send money overseas using crypto

Typically if you want to send money overseas you would do a wire payment through your bank.  This requires you knowing specific details about the customer name, account number, and their bank information.  It will take a few days, and if you accidentally get a detail wrong, forget about it, you wont know for a few days and you’ll have to start the process all over again.  An alternative way is to leverage crypto currency. 

Crypto still sounds like one of those “get rich quick” tulip bulb schemes, but it’s use for overseas remittance is one of the most practical and easy tools currently available on the market.    

It works like this:  person A uses their digital wallet to “buy” crypto.  Person A then transfers their crypto to person B’s wallet.  Person B then “sells” the crypto in their wallet and has cash in their local bank account.  Fund only move when they’re supposed to, and you’ll know near instantaneously if the transfer was successful. 

I know this sounds complicated, but it’s really not as daunting as it sounds.  Yes, it requires both people to have crypto wallets set up, but with how easy FinTechs are making it to set up accounts, it really isn’t much effort to do.  (Compare and contrast this with my traditional bank in Canada which is giving me a hard time for sending forms as JPEG versus PDF!). 

If you send via stable coin, then there are no concerns with price fluctuations on the underlying asset (like traditional methods FX conversion risks still exists depending on which currencies you are remitting and converting to).  It’s worth noting that the process isn’t completely free, but in most instances the costs will be lower than old school methods. 

Thoughts and opinions are purely my own, no ChatGPT here.  The above is just a brief conceptual summary, for more specific details, feel free to use ChatGTP.  I’d suggest a prompt along the lines of:

I need to send money to my child who is currently going to school in country [X].  I have a bank account with [insert bank here] and my child has a bank account with [insert oversees bank here].

What are the exact steps required, and which crypto broker is best to open in both countries to ensure compliance with local regulations.  Please also highlight the risks, costs, and settlement timelines in executing the above based on the countries and crypto brokers recommended.  Please also compare this to traditional methods of sending money aboard so I can appropriately consider the relative costs and risks.