Bitcoin Forum

My brother lives in India, I now found a route to remit money to him regularly, not only saving the remittance fee($20-50) but sometimes can still make 2% arbitrage profit. Here is how I do it:

1. I asked my brother to open an account with Unicoin(best funded exchange in the country) in India, need to go through verification process, took about a week.
2. Linked his India local bank account with Unicoin.  
3. I purchased bitcoin with Coinbase or Circle (free with linked bank account).
4. Send bitcoin to my brother Unicoin account.
5. Sell bitcoin (1% fee charge plus tax) and Unicoin will automatically deposit INR proceeds into my brother's linked bank account, normally he is able to sight the INR the same day.

Unicoin's bitcoin prices (bid) is consistently 3-5% higher than Bistamp/Coinbase/Circle's ask prices, so even after all fees, you not only remit the money for free, you still could make 1-3% profit by arbitrage.

This is the best way I ever found to remit money to India and see how bitcoin is going to be a game changer for international remittance and this is just a trivial application. Western Union is dead!





 

Why don't you use paypal?

Every one knows Paypal charge a lot. Thank you OP for sharing your experience. I think every one working abroad should know this new way of sending money home.

Nice, I am still working on US to Germany for myself via bank accounts but have started with localbitcoins for now. Your brother could possibly get an extra 10% or so if he uses localbitcoins and there is demand near him.

The thing is, I see potential once I get it automated because I work with a lot of people in the same boat as me complaining about the bite the banks take on getting their dollars to euros. Hundreds of people making six figure incomes. People will be willing to check out this Bitcoin thing if I show them they can save money each paycheck using it.

Interesting but risky strategy as your brother may be asked by the tax man to explain the provenance of the funds. That said, happy to see creative solutions.

tax was collected by the exchange as part of the transaction expense and they have done their KYC/AML on verified account. Safe so far.

nice find :)

You are wrong, no tax was collect exchange, When Income Tax Officer ask from your brother, from where he is getting Bitcoin.
Then he will not have any answer because it will be violation of FEMA.

That is why encashing BTC in Indian exchange after limit is very dangerous.

Exchanging 3-4 BTC in a year may be not a problem but doing regularly and transfer funds to Bank account without paying a tax is very risky. For Income tax officer it will be like Online income for your brother and your brother stealing tax from government.

free?
I don't know which one is free, even bitcoin, you also have to pay some fee

At the very least maintain records of the btc transfers from your brother to your embedded btc addresses on the exchange. Value transferred as gift between brothers is not taxed in India, but the tricky thing will be proving that the source btc were from your brother and not a third party in which case there would be tax payable.

Might be a FEMA violation btw...

he want to free, paypal free?

You can't steal theft.