I have a sincere question about #Ethereum.
Why does it cost money to transfer money?
Someone sent me about US$50 worth of ETH. In order to transfer it from one of my wallets to another, I had to pay a gas fee of a few ¢.
Why is this a good thing?
Last week I transfered literally thousands of £ between my bank accounts and I didn't pay anything.
(I'm interested in genuine answers. Please don't bother replying if you're a #crypto sceptic. I actually want answers, not snark.)
@Edent so, between your own bank accounts at the same bank? Or to a different bank?
Payment processors like Visa or SWIFT usually take a cut of transfers. It's not that unusual that Ethereum does too -- just in a more decentralized way.
@evan
Different banks. In the UK, interbank transfers are free and instant.
@Edent they are not free to the bank itself though! (I would like to point that I am not pro cryptocurrency at all here), but UK banking tends to just swallow the cost because it is accepted that they will, other countries don't operate under this assumption.
I assume because a transfer consumes resources on the chain you'd want to have some ability to make people pay for that permanent storage of data
@benjojo thanks, that's interesting. I do wonder how much of the cost is passed on to me.
I have a savings account paying a pretty decent interest rate - and transfers in and out are free.
So it *feels* kind of hard to accept that I'm paying for it in any meaningful way.
I guess at the scale the banks operate at, transaction costs must be micro-pennies each?
@Edent @benjojo FPS has an incredibly low transaction fee. The total cost of ownership when you include all the infrastructure too, not sure.
But if you don't support FPS as a financial institution in the UK then that's rather limiting anyway...