Work in Progress Post

Ok, I just did another test.  Coinbase advised I should consider Coinbase Pro.  So what the heck.  They did say my $3.85 fee seemed correct for using Coinbase.

But being cynical, I signed up for Coinbase Pro, to see what difference it made. I was already signed up, but needed to use my Coinbase login credentials.  And I transferred some money into Coinbase Pro.  Seems to be seperate systems, because Coinbase Pro, doesn't list my Coinbase accounts.  Apparently I'd have to transfer those.  For now, I'll keep it seperate.

I did a test transaction of $10 and it charged only $0.03 cents for thee transaction.  My portfolio shows my initial cash deposit + the $10 buy, and I'm only $0.03 cents below my $300 (The fee).  And it's showing the $10 in coin I bought as $9.95 (fee + declining market).  So this is a good start.  It looks like I have only $0.03 cost for that $10 coin. 

I then setup for buying $100 in some crypto, and it's showing the fee is going to be $0.6, which is a little higher but far below the $3.85 I was previously charged.  And based on my pevious buy, I suspect that will be correct.

I haven't checked the cashing out costs because there is a 5 day wait to withdraw, since my initial deposit hasn't cleared yet. I'm thinking they are likely going to discount the value, upon withdrawl.  It will be interesting to see how much that is. if that is on the order of 10%. I wont have gained anything, except knowledge how this exchange works.

Still working on the lowest fee option.

Is it possible to get into crypto, and only have mining fees to deal with?

Ok, name one way of moving $1000, into crypto, waiting a month, and cashing out, that cost only $0.1 or less.  Let me make this a little easier.

Say you had $10,000 to invest in crypto.  What is one of the best ways/exchanges/networks (exact name or signup link) where that money could be invested, sit for a year, and cashed out, with the least fees (and I mean all fees: deposit, transfer, withdrawl, or whatever).  I'm not going to be buying coins, to be able to pay for stuff. I will be choosing coins I feel have best chance of increasing value.  So, my intent is to park some money in crypto, and letting it sit till I wish to withdraw it.  I wonder if it's even possible to have fees that are less than 2% to make the round trip from bank, to crypto, and back, with total fees less than 2%?

I'm not trying to be contrary.  I'm seriously trying to find the best way of parking some money for a year or so, maybe longer or maybe shorter.  If I do see a spike, I might move it, but otherwise, it will just sit there for a year or so, or maybe longer, depending on if I need to use the money. But I don't want 10% fees, if they can be avoided. AND, I'm sure I can learn all this, if I took the time to just read everything out there, but I have found it a better practice to just ask those who have gone before.

Thanks,

This is not aimed at you directly. Sorry if it seems that way.  Almost every reply ignores answering the question and defends crypto instead.

I can't begin to point out how no one is actually answering the question.  Instead of trying to defend crypto, why not just answer the darn question.  The question, has an answer regardless of what crypto does or doesn't do, or is or isn't.

Is there anyone reading this, who can provide some insight into ways of investing in crypto, or depositing money into crypto, that has the lowest fees. 10% to move money from bank, and back to bank seems extraordinarily high.  There must be a better way.  As a test, I put $300 in a couple of days ago.  I'm going to put it all in my bank, and see what the round trip costs me.  Then I'll know a real world example. 

Then I'll put that and more into several different crypto currencies.  I just want to come up to speed quickly, so I don't put it into an exchange or network that's going to wipe out any gains.  Let me put this another way, say you had $10,000 extra, what system or network would you use, that has the lowest fees for depositing, transferring, and cashing out?

That's why I am asking the question.

I'm currently using coinbase. To buy they charged $3.85 for a $100 purchase. To cash out I will have to pay a fee to convert to a fiat currency. To send the cash to my bank, another fee. So those fees could amount to $10%. I'd have to make 10% just to break even. The fees were listed as $2.99 fixed or 1.5% variable. The fee charged was neither, for 3 purchases. So I'm looking for lowest fee options.

I looked into all-in-one digital wallets and they charge 5%-8%, that might be even higher fees.

I'm going to be putting money into a few good prospect coins and just let it sit for the most part. But if I see one spiking or out performing, I might want to make a change. Keeping my fees low, helps in that regard.

So what I'm trying to find the best way to lower the fees for buying, transfering, and cashing out. I know there is an answer to that.  I'm just trying to find out the answer to that.

I have to be an idiot to be looking into this again.

A number of years ago, I put a few bucks, into one of the coins, just to see how it worked.  The first thing I found was that you have to be careful about fees. They can eat you alive.  But I left $50 in one of the exchanges and forgot about it for a few years.  When I looked again, after about 3 years, it was over $300.

But I still believe it's one of the most risky ways of saving/investing/storing your money.  Slightly better than chain letters and pyramid schemes. It's backed by nothing, produces nothing, and money put in is not invested in anything.  Every penny goes into a hole and disappears.  The only way you can ever get your money out, is by trusting there might be someone to buy what you sell.  To buy, someone has to sell.  To sell, someone has to buy.  It's like the mother of all pyramid schemes.

Crypto has a finite number of investors/players.  Once that number reaches it's saturation point, and there are no more investors, the value of every crypto suddenly drops to zero.  And yes, there is a theoretical saturation point. Further, that point isn't limited by the world population.  It can be reached based on world conditions. And no, just because there might be a world calamity like war, that doesn't guarantee that people will be more interested in crypto currencies.

That said, what is the best way to buy crypto c, that has the lowest fees and least headaches?  And while risky, it's not illegal.  So, I'm going to take a much larger amount of money (>$10000) and see how long it takes to double it.  The first thing I need to do is find a way to minimize the fees to play this game.

Thanks for all the answers.  I think this is starting to make sense.  Still a little complicated.  However,

I did a quick test (again) to estimate a $10 cashout to my bank.

Estimated 0.99 to convert from BTC to USD
Estimated 0.55 to transfer to my bank.

Did the conversion and indeed it was exact.
$9.01 USD after conversion and $8.46 deposited into account.

$1.54 for the test. 😉

I just bought $200 additional with bank debit card and the fee was $7.62.  I thought the fee structure said it would be only $2.99. So I'm still missing something.

Update: I'm leaving my original comment about buying fee but updating that I just read a debit purchase is 3.99%. But even that is slightly off.3.99% of 200 isn't $7.62.  

But thanks, I'll figure it out with additional reading

Ok, please bear with me.

This is one of the main reasons I haven't used bitcoin (crypto currencies). It's practically impossible to get a straight answer on what it might cost to cash out.

Crypto currency is only useful for buying oe selling something, if buyers and sellers even accept it, OR for speculation. For me, there isn't much I need that uses crypto. However speculation on the future value is interesting. I'm not sure I trust it yet, but that's beside the point.  Eventually everyone has to cash out.

I did a test a few years ago. I bought $50 in bitcoin, through coinbase.  I wanted to see how it all works. Buying was pretty straight forward.  I got a desktop wallet to see how that worked. I put a few $$ in that wallet. Again pretty straight forward. But I forgot that password so that money is gone. Valuable lesson learned.

Then I wanted to see how transferring back to my bank worked. I transfered some of my $50 back to bank. That was my first shock. The fees ate up about half of the amount transferred to bank.

I did check coinbase fees but it's near impossible to get an estimate on how much it will cost. I know the bitcoin must be converted to a fiat currency my bank accepts. That's the first puzzle. Which one?

Then the actual fee is a mystery.

It seems that a ballpark answer should be possible. Yet as many times I have asked this no one can give an answer.  Thats the problem, it's too complicated.

I am considering again because what was left of my original $50 ($24 to be exact) is now over $200 in 3 years.  I'd like to put some more in someday but not if the cashout fee will eat it all up.

So as to my original question, let's just make it ballpark. For $2000 in bitcoin, through any coinbase-like broker, if I wanted to cash out to bank would the total fees be

1) Less than $10
2) Less than $25
3) Less than $50
4) Less than $100
5) It could be anything

Thanks

Say I had $2000 in bitcoin, through Coinbase. If I wanted to cash out, what could I expect thr total fees I would pay?

I'm not looking for best way to buy bitcoin. I'm just looking for an answer to that direct question.

I'm so new, I don't even know what that means. 

My total point in asking these questions is because I want to put some money into BitCoin. Not much. Maybe $1000 or so. I see more and more are accepting bitcoin for payment.  but
* I don't know the best way/place or why one exchange is better than the other or why (I guess I could have asked that first). I can read what the exchanges say the reasons are but that's marketing. I'd rather ask actual users.

* but more importantly, I want to understand fees. The fees are clear as mud. I don't like mud.

* Because market is so volatile I'd like to understand ways of mitigating losses, where possible, but especially losses because of ignorance.  The only time I would be considering cashing it out, is if I'm totally done with bitcoin system.  Otherwise I'd just leave it there and use the funds for buying and selling things, or transferring to friends or family.

The last thing I want to do is put money into something when I don't understand fees or how to get it out, and without being eaten up by fees on the way out.  The only reason I have any money in it now (albeit tiny) was to understand the process of how transactions worked.  I put $50 into Coinbase. Then I created a desktop wallet. Then transferred $some to that wallet.  If I recall it ate up over half just on the transfer.  I eventually lost the password to that wallet (created 3 years ago). So that's gone.  No big loss. It was just a test.  I had $25 left in the original Coinbase.

Now, if I decide to put a larger amount in bitcoin, I definitely want to know
* fees (for all types of transactions)
* best ways to get out if and when I'm ever done with it (maybe never. But need to know just the same)
* ways to avoid losses through ignorance

Seems like reasonable things to wonder about.

I think I bought a tiny amount of Bitcoin about 3 years ago.  After fees, it was about $26 (bucks).  Did a little testing to see how this all works and forgot about it. But not before I created a wallet on my computer (to see how that works).  And then transferred some money to it.  That all worked great.

Now zoom ahead. Of course I wrote my info down on a piece of paper but lost it. So that tiny bit of money is gone, if I can't find the wallet.  I can probably guess the password.  But that's not why I came here.

I also had the original $26 in my original account (through a crypto currency exchange). That login info I still have.  But I was surprised to see it was over 6 times what I had to start with.  And it recently had a high of 7x the original amount.  That got my interest.

NOW I have some questions that I should have asked before.  Oh well, better late than never.

1) What are the typical (and lowest) fees to cash out, and have money transferred to bank account? I'm just going to leave the money in that account.  And I might buy some more bitcoin (through the exchange I signed up with).  But before I do, I need some answers.  Fees are high for some transactions.  I do NOT want to only use the option of leaving the money there forever, and just buy from that account.  Mostly I will do that but there may/will come a day, when I want to cash out.  

2) Is there ANY way of parking money, during a decline for instance, that just freezes the $ amount you have in an account?  Like converting it to USD Cash, and just holding it so that a long decline doesn't wipe it out. Obviously it means taking out of whatever crypto currency it's in and putting it somewhere.  But I don't see a "where" to do that.  Obviously, one could begin the process of a transfer but that would cost heavy fees.   And I guess one could just convert to another crypto currency that isn't falling.  But, in general, is there a way to just freeze the dollar amount you have in one of the exchanges?

3) Addresses.  I'm kind of confused about addresses and why they should only be used once.  Easy enough to follow that good practice but I'd like to understand the "why".  From what I have read, using an address more than once can lead to compromise of data, money, or something, because of the history factor of transactions it's used in.  

Last night my daughter got me thinking about all of this. She has a bitcoin account and as a test, I wanted to see how sending worked, how much the fees were, and how long it took.  So, she told me her bitcoin address, I used that to send her $10.  It arrived in only a few minutes, and went through several stages of pending until it arrived.  It took less than 30 minutes to become available.  Fee was minimal. I think less than a buck.  But if that address was to be used again, how could/would that compromise her account?

How does using an address, more than once, create a vulnerability?  It's much easier to remember not to do something, if you know why it's a bad idea.

4) Related to #3: Also, everything I have read says to protect your address and not divulge it.  However, if you need someone to send BTC to your account (as in paying you for something they bought), you have to tell at least them, don't you?  If you send anyone your address, can that allow someone/anyone to take money out, instead of putting it in?

5) Partitioning money/Multiple accounts. What is the best way, or is there a way, to split up your money, into several accounts, such that a single address does not point back to ALL the money you have in BTC?  I'm using CoinBase and I don't see a way to have multiple accounts, other than multiple crypto currencies. But that is counter productive, if you have a preferred crypto currency you want to use.

6) What if? Prices go up on BTC, when people are buying and go down, when people are selling. So I've read.  I like to consider extreme cases.  So, what happens if tomorrow, EVERYONE just stops using Bitcoin (hypothetically). Does bitcoin suddenly start a long decline?  Is the price of BTC frozen and unchanging? What specifically happens, if everyone left there money in BTC, but just stopped buying or selling and there were no new buyers?  What does the value of BTC do?

6) Login problems Kind of off-topic: I'm using coinbase.  Every time I login, the website says the password is incorrect, and I have to go through the "Forgot Password" link to reset it.  Even then, the next time I try to login, it says the password is wrong again.  Why? and how do I fix it?  This doesn't happen on my phone, only my desktop.  I suspect it's a browser cache thing but not sure.

Thanks for info.  I don't need to transfer except to  move from where I buy it, to a wallet stored offline.  I was just testing how bitcoin works. I bought a small amount, just to see how it works. If I messed up and sent it to neverland, no big loss.  Just want to see how things work, before putting more into it.

Some questions:

1) Are the hardware wallets worth the cost?
2) Do they have high fees to transfer to the wallet?
3) Are hardware wallets better or more secure than software wallets?
4) When bitcoin is put into a wallet, and disconnected from the internet, does the value still rise and fall with the value of bitcoin, or do you have to be online?
5) What is the best, or most secure wallet, that most would recommend?

Thanks

This can't be right. I mean all the time. Fees seem very high.

I put just $50 into bitcoins using Coinbase, just to see how it works.

Then, I created a software wallet on my computer (Electrum) and generated an address. Wanted to see how a transfer might go.

Went back to Coinbase to initiate a small $5 transfer, to the address.  I was presented with a summary of the transaction and it said the Network Fees were going to be $14.  Wow! Needless to say I didn't proceed.  Then I tried many other values to see if it was value dependent and it wasn't.  Are all fees typically in that range?  I was expecting a few sends. Surely much less than a buck.  

What are the typical transfer fee magnitude? I know it fluctuates but I can't imagine why anyone would use this, if fees are larger than the transfer amount.  I must be doing something wrong.

Is there a way to get lower fees?  I didn't see any options that might make them lower, in creating the address.