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Topic: Fees: Bitcoin vs Western Union pr $ transferred (Read 828 times)

sr. member
Activity: 448
Merit: 250
It's Money 2.0| It’s gold for nerds | It's Bitcoin
Thank you so much Smiley

Though my problem at the moment is crossing the fees with the daily US$ exchange rate to get total fees. I suppose I'll have to get a spreadsheet going Smiley

Unless you are exchanging a very small amount on exchanges it should almost always be very obvious that it is cheaper to use bitcoin then it is to use Western Union. 
sr. member
Activity: 266
Merit: 250
I'm trying to figure out exactly how many Bitcoin fees were paid pr $ transferred in 2013 to compare it to Western Union. Is this doable?
I can't even find a chart for the amount of Bitcoin fees paid in 2013 :/

Long story short it is much cheaper to send money via BTC then it is to send money via WU.

It generally costs ~8% to send smallish amount via WU while sending at least $10 via BTC would cost well under 1%.

If you wanted to calculate all costs as a comparison you should be sure to include exchange fees as the receiver of BTC would have little use for it in 2013 (much less then they have now) and would need to convert the BTC into fiat.
full member
Activity: 216
Merit: 100
Thank you so much Smiley

Though my problem at the moment is crossing the fees with the daily US$ exchange rate to get total fees. I suppose I'll have to get a spreadsheet going Smiley
legendary
Activity: 4354
Merit: 3260
What you want to to do is add up all the transaction fees paid in all the blocks and divide that by all the bitcoins that have been transferred in the block chain to get an average transaction rate. You can get both of those numbers from the block chain, but maybe it has already been done.

Edit: well that wasn't too hard

Here are the transaction fees: https://blockchain.info/charts/transaction-fees?showDataPoints=false×pan=all&show_header=true&daysAverageString=1&scale=0&format=csv&address=

Here is the total transaction volume: https://blockchain.info/charts/output-volume?showDataPoints=false×pan=all&show_header=true&daysAverageString=1&scale=0&format=csv&address=

Here is the total volume with an attempt to exclude change: https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume?showDataPoints=false×pan=all&show_header=true&daysAverageString=1&scale=0&format=csv&address=
legendary
Activity: 1512
Merit: 1011
full member
Activity: 216
Merit: 100
I'm trying to figure out exactly how many Bitcoin fees were paid pr $ transferred in 2013 to compare it to Western Union. Is this doable?
I can't even find a chart for the amount of Bitcoin fees paid in 2013 :/
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