Bitcoin as a way of avoiding to change money when travelling abroad

[bitesquina]

If you travel abroad from time to time, you are probably used to change money: to do so, you have to find a change office and accept the rates they offer. Many of them also ask to pay a fixed-amount fee, they want more money than what they get from the fx rate.... If it is a touristic place, there may be a little competition from different change offices, at least, if they don't agree prices. But in general, as an individual, you have very little power, you can't hardly negotitate, only accept what they propose... On the other side, if you choose to withdraw money from an ATM with your credit card, you will be paying the FX rate your bank decides to apply to you, with potentially other fees...

However, if Bitcoin become an accepted currency in shops worlwide, we could avoid to change money to the local currency. We will still need to change from OUR currency to Bitcoin, but I feel that we have a much larger negotiting power on that:
- you can do it anytime from your home
- you may automatically buy Bitcoin with a given limit at interesting rates, intead of accepting the prices proposed by a few change offices in the area
- you may have already created a Bitcoin wallet and be used to it: you will automatically understand if a price in a shop is cheap or expensive because you are used to see prices in bitcoins, instead of having to translate into your currency...
- you may keep the remaining money in Bitcoins and still be able to use it when you are back home, etc...

Bitcoin would work as a parallel universal currency, a situation that already exists with USD in many countries, where it is used in parallel with the local currency.

But of course, prior to that, it will need to become widely accepted and have a more stable price

What do you think? Have you ever used bitcoin when travelling abroad?

[cramcram21]

If you travel abroad from time to time, you are probably used to change money: to do so, you have to find a change office and accept the rates they offer. Many of them also ask to pay a fixed-amount fee, they want more money than what they get from the fx rate.... If it is a touristic place, there may be a little competition from different change offices, at least, if they don't agree prices. But in general, as an individual, you have very little power, you can't hardly negotitate, only accept what they propose... On the other side, if you choose to withdraw money from an ATM with your credit card, you will be paying the FX rate your bank decides to apply to you, with potentially other fees...

However, if Bitcoin become an accepted currency in shops worlwide, we could avoid to change money to the local currency. We will still need to change from OUR currency to Bitcoin, but I feel that we have a much larger negotiting power on that:
- you can do it anytime from your home
- you may automatically buy Bitcoin with a given limit at interesting rates, intead of accepting the prices proposed by a few change offices in the area
- you may have already created a Bitcoin wallet and be used to it: you will automatically understand if a price in a shop is cheap or expensive because you are used to see prices in bitcoins, instead of having to translate into your currency...
- you may keep the remaining money in Bitcoins and still be able to use it when you are back home, etc...

Bitcoin would work as a parallel universal currency, a situation that already exists with USD in many countries, where it is used in parallel with the local currency.

But of course, prior to that, it will need to become widely accepted and have a more stable price

What do you think? Have you ever used bitcoin when travelling abroad?

Well never really tried to travel abroad but this is really a good idea,
We could really use bitcoin to buy their currency without fees with their local FIAT exchanger.

[Potato Chips]

All statements you've said make sense but yes that is if bitcoin become as popular and accepted like mastercard or visa-- i know they're both completely different but i'm talking

about the popularity and acceptance because paypal is mostly good for online usage but both of them are popular on both sides. now back to the question i haven't used it as i

have never travelled outside my country lol but it'll be difficult to use it directly now because of the limited merchants

[carcassone]

Depends the country and the rate of the company, you can also use a debit card loaded with btc.
You have in some cases good level of anonymity, fair fees, good valuation for each coins.
But personal suggestion, it's better save then spend btc

[Janation]

Depends the country and the rate of the company, you can also use a debit card loaded with btc.
You have in some cases good level of anonymity, fair fees, good valuation for each coins.
But personal suggestion, it's better save then spend btc

I think this will be great, but as you have said it depends on the country. I think I will be fine because I am using a wallet from an exchanger, this exchanger has a conection with other countries banks so I can say that it will be great. I don't really tried owning a debit card with bitcoins but I think if I will be going in other countries, it is worth trying.

[Franky00]

This is a good idea, but all the same, it will not be possible to settle accounts in every country with the help of bitcoins. Also it is necessary to take into account that in some countries it is generally prohibited.

[Qartersa]

I think it is possible, but you won't save much money, I think. It really depends on the exchange rates, what country you will be traveling to, and where you are from.

If you are traveling from the US, UK, Europe, China, or Japan, then you actually don't need to find ways to save on FX rates. Since your currency is acceptable world wide. If however, you are from countries whose currency is not acceptable world wide or FX buys it really low, then your option is to convert your currency to USD then convert to the currency of the place you are traveling to, and that costs a lot. That maybe the time where bitcoins could help.

[hatshepsut93]

This sounds really good and promising, but we are years away from times when Bitcoin will be accepted by every merchant. Today you might find some places in big cities that accept Bitcoin, but most of the time you will have to exchange BTC for local currency. And when Bitcoin will reach mass adoption, governments will have all sorts of regulations regarding it - you'll have to tell how much Bitcoins you own when you cross the border, pay taxes and fees. It might be cheaper than current fiat system, but not absolutely free.

[joseafonso123az]

Well, this to happen bitcoin have to be accepted worldwide, or atleast in the place you want to travel. And that might take several years still. But yes, it would be a good measure, to not to have to exchange everytime we travel.  And if that happens, dollar will have a competition, and corporates wouldn't  want that.

[Lieldoryn]

And now you can change bitcoins from any country in the world for local currency, but it is very inconvenient. Perhaps in the future, miners will realize that it is better to reduce the cost per transaction for stores. If it is to develop trade with bitcoin, the money that goes into the pocket of the exchangers will go to the miners and everyone will be happy.

[Palodar]

And now you can change bitcoins from any country in the world for local currency, but it is very inconvenient. Perhaps in the future, miners will realize that it is better to reduce the cost per transaction for stores. If it is to develop trade with bitcoin, the money that goes into the pocket of the exchangers will go to the miners and everyone will be happy.

Yes, the only doubt in using it is the transaction fee, yet it is mostly convenient especially if were into travel and already spend all the country cash ,we can use btc if that cointry liie Japan implemented it.

[doomloop]

Well, this to happen bitcoin have to be accepted worldwide, or atleast in the place you want to travel. And that might take several years still. But yes, it would be a good measure, to not to have to exchange everytime we travel.  And if that happens, dollar will have a competition, and corporates wouldn't  want that.

this is really true the price and the importance of the bitcoin is increasing and the popularity of the bitcoin has become worldwide famous so a lot of people are accepting bitcoin for several ways and they are considering bitcoin as real currency it is increasing the importance of the bitcoin more and more so I think it will be more good to put bitcoin as the traveling payment and if they will pay the salary of the pilot with bitcoin then it will be super good.

[omonuyak]

Bitcoin provided the best opportunity for travellers to be able to transfer money without much fee and bitcoin transfer is far more reliable than bank transfer to me. Banks or forex charges is too high for mass to travelling. Bitcoin nature as a decentralized currency make people from all walks of life to transact business without hindrance and discrimination. You can now use your money all over the world without much questioning and dispute.

[ss890]

It doesn't need to be widely accepted. It is already present everywhere you go in the world. I mean you can just cash out it for local currency by using bitcoin debit card or other cards services provided by different altcoin inventors.
There is one more option that is: when you travel to specific country then you can download wallet supported by that country and then generate bitcoin address and send your bitcoin to that wallet. You can easily then convert it to the local currency and use that money as travel money.

If you are left with anything after coming back then you can send that to your local currency and get your money back. That's the beauty of bitcoin.

[pearlmen]

If you travel abroad from time to time, you are probably used to change money: to do so, you have to find a change office and accept the rates they offer. Many of them also ask to pay a fixed-amount fee, they want more money than what they get from the fx rate.... If it is a touristic place, there may be a little competition from different change offices, at least, if they don't agree prices. But in general, as an individual, you have very little power, you can't hardly negotitate, only accept what they propose... On the other side, if you choose to withdraw money from an ATM with your credit card, you will be paying the FX rate your bank decides to apply to you, with potentially other fees...

However, if Bitcoin become an accepted currency in shops worlwide, we could avoid to change money to the local currency. We will still need to change from OUR currency to Bitcoin, but I feel that we have a much larger negotiting power on that:
- you can do it anytime from your home
- you may automatically buy Bitcoin with a given limit at interesting rates, intead of accepting the prices proposed by a few change offices in the area
- you may have already created a Bitcoin wallet and be used to it: you will automatically understand if a price in a shop is cheap or expensive because you are used to see prices in bitcoins, instead of having to translate into your currency...
- you may keep the remaining money in Bitcoins and still be able to use it when you are back home, etc...

Bitcoin would work as a parallel universal currency, a situation that already exists with USD in many countries, where it is used in parallel with the local currency.

But of course, prior to that, it will need to become widely accepted and have a more stable price

What do you think? Have you ever used bitcoin when travelling abroad?

I have actually thought about it as well that rather than going from here to another country and having to go through all those bottlenecks, I will just decide to keep my money in btc and sell when I get there but there will equally be limitation so far btc has not been generally accepted and its because some Point of Entry officers always mandate that one have required amount of cash to be able to enter and aside that, one needs to understand how it works there at the moment or else. The first action in a foreign country will be committing an offence.

[jmigdlc99]

Your idea will depend much on whether the country your visiting has a local BITCOIN-FIAT exchange. You should be fine if you are visiting developed countries with bitcoin exchanges but most of the time traveling to exotic places without bitcoin exchanges is much more fun.

[GreenBits]

If you travel abroad from time to time, you are probably used to change money: to do so, you have to find a change office and accept the rates they offer. Many of them also ask to pay a fixed-amount fee, they want more money than what they get from the fx rate.... If it is a touristic place, there may be a little competition from different change offices, at least, if they don't agree prices. But in general, as an individual, you have very little power, you can't hardly negotitate, only accept what they propose... On the other side, if you choose to withdraw money from an ATM with your credit card, you will be paying the FX rate your bank decides to apply to you, with potentially other fees...

However, if Bitcoin become an accepted currency in shops worlwide, we could avoid to change money to the local currency. We will still need to change from OUR currency to Bitcoin, but I feel that we have a much larger negotiting power on that:
- you can do it anytime from your home
- you may automatically buy Bitcoin with a given limit at interesting rates, intead of accepting the prices proposed by a few change offices in the area
- you may have already created a Bitcoin wallet and be used to it: you will automatically understand if a price in a shop is cheap or expensive because you are used to see prices in bitcoins, instead of having to translate into your currency...
- you may keep the remaining money in Bitcoins and still be able to use it when you are back home, etc...

Bitcoin would work as a parallel universal currency, a situation that already exists with USD in many countries, where it is used in parallel with the local currency.

But of course, prior to that, it will need to become widely accepted and have a more stable price

What do you think? Have you ever used bitcoin when travelling abroad?

I have actually thought about it as well that rather than going from here to another country and having to go through all those bottlenecks, I will just decide to keep my money in btc and sell when I get there but there will equally be limitation so far btc has not been generally accepted and its because some Point of Entry officers always mandate that one have required amount of cash to be able to enter and aside that, one needs to understand how it works there at the moment or else. The first action in a foreign country will be committing an offence.

OP has a pretty good idea, here are a few caveats:

You can use most bank cards , esp those with the 3Dsecure feature, damn near internationally. If they accept a card, they will usually accept a 3dsecure branded card. You will pay a fee, however, for using it outside of its boundaries.

You can bring bitcoin, but in some countries, as a foreigner there I would want to use a bank, or a known service, to convert from bitcoin to local fiat. There are horror stories of guys getting scammed on the board during in person transactions; not speaking the language would also be a huge barrier to using trusted guys on localbitcoins (local bitcoin is freaking everywhere). Local cops might not look too fondly on a foreign person crossing the border and immediately starting to convert into local currency from a crypto, they dont have alot of trust everywhere just yet, and are still associated with criminal bullshit in the eyes of the public.

Same deal when you eventually leave. If you have local fiat, it would be a pain to convert that to bitcoin. You would end up converting it back to your native fiat, for when you get home, at a fee.

Best solution, and the most secure? A traveler's check. There is a reason why they are named as such

[winterland]

If you travel abroad from time to time, you are probably used to change money: to do so, you have to find a change office and accept the rates they offer. Many of them also ask to pay a fixed-amount fee, they want more money than what they get from the fx rate.... If it is a touristic place, there may be a little competition from different change offices, at least, if they don't agree prices. But in general, as an individual, you have very little power, you can't hardly negotitate, only accept what they propose... On the other side, if you choose to withdraw money from an ATM with your credit card, you will be paying the FX rate your bank decides to apply to you, with potentially other fees...

However, if Bitcoin become an accepted currency in shops worlwide, we could avoid to change money to the local currency. We will still need to change from OUR currency to Bitcoin, but I feel that we have a much larger negotiting power on that:
- you can do it anytime from your home
- you may automatically buy Bitcoin with a given limit at interesting rates, intead of accepting the prices proposed by a few change offices in the area
- you may have already created a Bitcoin wallet and be used to it: you will automatically understand if a price in a shop is cheap or expensive because you are used to see prices in bitcoins, instead of having to translate into your currency...
- you may keep the remaining money in Bitcoins and still be able to use it when you are back home, etc...

Bitcoin would work as a parallel universal currency, a situation that already exists with USD in many countries, where it is used in parallel with the local currency.

But of course, prior to that, it will need to become widely accepted and have a more stable price

What do you think? Have you ever used bitcoin when travelling abroad?

Bitcoin has still not gathered enough support to make this strategy easy to implement but I think we are going to come to a point in which you are going to be able to do exactly that, you will be able to travel without cash and credit cards and use only bitcoin for your needs.

[BigBoy89]

If you travel abroad from time to time, you are probably used to change money: to do so, you have to find a change office and accept the rates they offer. Many of them also ask to pay a fixed-amount fee, they want more money than what they get from the fx rate.... If it is a touristic place, there may be a little competition from different change offices, at least, if they don't agree prices. But in general, as an individual, you have very little power, you can't hardly negotitate, only accept what they propose... On the other side, if you choose to withdraw money from an ATM with your credit card, you will be paying the FX rate your bank decides to apply to you, with potentially other fees...

However, if Bitcoin become an accepted currency in shops worlwide, we could avoid to change money to the local currency. We will still need to change from OUR currency to Bitcoin, but I feel that we have a much larger negotiting power on that:
- you can do it anytime from your home
- you may automatically buy Bitcoin with a given limit at interesting rates, intead of accepting the prices proposed by a few change offices in the area
- you may have already created a Bitcoin wallet and be used to it: you will automatically understand if a price in a shop is cheap or expensive because you are used to see prices in bitcoins, instead of having to translate into your currency...
- you may keep the remaining money in Bitcoins and still be able to use it when you are back home, etc...

Bitcoin would work as a parallel universal currency, a situation that already exists with USD in many countries, where it is used in parallel with the local currency.

But of course, prior to that, it will need to become widely accepted and have a more stable price

What do you think? Have you ever used bitcoin when travelling abroad?

BTC is far away of needed support to be able to do it in real live.

Almost every BTC->Fiat local exchange is having more than 3% margin on BTC price. Banks are usually capped at 3%.
It's the same with BTC ATM's.

And what about the current fees? For example if you want to exchange in local currency 200 euro, you will need to pay exchangeable fee + ~5 euro translation fee! This is currently a way more expensive than fiat banks!

[syaripudin]

This is a very good thing of course this will make it easier when we go out of town. but there are things that make it very difficult, because I think not all countries can accept the existence of bitcoin as well as fiat money there. In my country not yet many cities that can fully accept BTC only a few cities with visitors who are very many tourists who receive bitcoin. And even then I think there will be biyaya that can not be negotiated again, of course we have to follow what they want. if the biyayanya quite expensive this will harm us only. I think if I am going to go to another country I'd better save btc, then it would swap the fiat once it gets in that country.