Kraken has recently changed their address to the Virgin Islands, it used to be London/UK so maybe that also triggers more red flags at Swiss banks…
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Hello Dr. PI!
I would like to buy every month … CHF of crypto currencies (mainly BTC and ETH) and I was wondering if Kraken is still the way to go in your opinion.
After a spectacular failure of Lykke I realized that I did a typical mistake of chasing away from good enough for better. Kraken and Bitfinex were one of first crypto exchanges that I was using (we are talking 2021, it is not that long ago). You won’t see much advertisement and breaking news about them most of the time, they are just working.
Instead of staying with them and sparing myself many efforts and some money, I was trying to get even better deals in terms of trading fees and yields by going to Binance, FTX, CryptoCom, KuCoin, and some others. This was in part on purpose because I wanted to splurge on all trading and market timing impulses I want using a small portfolio in a fast-paced market.
Lykke was my last try, as they were accepting CHF deposits and had many trading pairs in CHF. It was not necessarily cheaper, as spreads were significant, but I thought it could be simper, if I deposit CHF and trade directly in it without intermediate currency conversions. Well, it’s finished.
So yes, I don’t see anything better than Kraken for Swiss residents to introduce funds into the crypto ecosystem. I deposit both CHF and EUR (I have leftovers sometimes and don’t want to keep them). I can buy BTC for CHF and immediately withdraw via Lightning Network. Considering that no intermediate currency conversion is involved, a fee of 0.4% with a tight spread is decent.
Other coins I buy with USDT mostly at Bitfinex. Kraken has a USDT/CHF pair. As it is a stablecoin/fiat pair, the fee is 0.2%. The withdrawal fee for USDT starts from 1 or 2 USDT, I think, which is a bit steep for small amounts. So I ended up buying once a larger amount, withdraw it to my personal wallet and use these money to buy coins for a long time, not just for one investment round.
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If you are fine with 3rd party custody, why not use an ETF?
If you are comfortable with self custody, i am very happy with Mt.Pelerin, which is a swiss provider.
Was Relai also mentioned in this thread?
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Would also be interested. Can somebody compare Relai to Kraken?
Swiss, Bitcoin only. LN per Swap. Relai guys very approachable (like at Lugano PlanB). I have a weekly btc buy setup. Up to 100chf/month no fees (except credit card fees). Wire transfer should be possible but haven’t tried it yet. You can send the BTC directly to your external wallet.
Wanna invest more than 100k chf call Julian or Adem directly.
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Relai is solid. Just learn about unspendable UTXOs when DCAing a small amount on-chain.
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Yes but which one is cheaper? Kraken? I also don’t like the fact that on Relai you always have to send the correct amount of cash in advance and then they buy later/the next day for you at whatever price BTC is then, right?
don’t know about that. With credit card it’s right away.
Costs: with CC there is a fee… 2% and for relai 1.5% or so… I think kraken is cheaper. Most of my buying I do via Kraken.
Way too expensive. How cheap is Kraken? I don’t find useful information online. Except for Kraken Pro. Is Kraken Pro cheaper than “regular” Kraken? If so, what’s the catch?
You’ll find the info here. Fees 0 to 0.4%. Fee wise I don’t see a difference. What you can do with “regular” is buying instantly with 3% fee.
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So, have you found a cheaper way , via Lightning network, to transfer BTC from Kraken to a cold wallet like Ledger?
So I tried it out the first time. Bank transfer of CHF 500 from Yuh to Kraken this morning, deposit took place in less than 1 hour.
I then checked the fees on “regular” Kraken vs Kraken Pro. About CHF 5 for regular Kraken, CHF 2 for Kraken Pro (=0.4%). Therefore Kraken Pro cheaper. Bought BTC for CHF 498. Then made a withdrawal to hard wallet, which costs 0.00003 BTC (about CHF 2.50) per transaction if I understand correctly. So the only way to save more fees is to make fewer transactions I guess?
So compared to Relai, where you pay at least 1% fees for buying BTC (if you use the savings plan, Code and above 100CHF), this seems cheaper. Also smaller spread on Kraken I guess. If you buy BTC on Relai and send it to a hard wallet, you have to pay some BTC as well in fees I believe?
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Kraken has a fixes fee for BTC withdrawals. Relai uses the actual fees at that time. Further with Relai you have to consider the amount of UTXOs used (which is not shown), with every UTXO the fee is slightly higher. But at actual rates withdrawal is cheaper with relai.
(potentially possible: kraken > relai via LN then swap and withdrawal)… but toooo much hassle for small fee advantage.
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More or less. Here is the workflow that works for BTC.
- Transfer funds (I use CHF or sometimes EUR) to Kraken.
- Buy BTC. 0.4% fee, spread is low.
- Transfer BTC via Lightning Network to Bitfinex (free).
- At Bitfinex, convert Lightning Network BTC to normal BTC, and that one to Liquid BTC (free).
- Withdraw Liquid BTC to SideSwap (free).
This is a non-custodial wallet for Liquid Bitcoin. Obviously you should backup the recovery phrase.
- Accumulate and wait for a good moment to withdraw on chain (low fees).
SideSwap has a “Peg-Out” function to withdraw Liquid Bitcoin to a base layer address. Fee is 0.1% and it costs mining fees. I target 0.1% or less for mining fees. Two ways to get there: either wait and increase the amount that should be withdrawn or wait for lower fees.
I did it twice. First time I don’t remember well, but I have a feeling that I wasn’t able to adjust BTC transaction fee and I was a bit stressed to have my transaction stuck in Limbo. But it went through quite fast.
Second time I chose the fee somewhat above the minimum for transactions that were being prepared for the next block, and it went through in the next block just fine.
So, the total fee from CHF to BTC on chain of around 0.6%.
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Why don’t you just make fewer but bigger withdrawals from Kraken, so that you have to pay the 0.00003 BTC less often? You’ll end up at 0.6% as well if the withdrawal is at about CHF 1250 in BTC (by the current price).
6 posts were merged into an existing topic: Self-custody of cryptocurrencies
Can anyone confirm this?
Same problem with WIR (can’t choose BVI). So you’re saying it’s okay to fill in the adress of the bank instead of the recipient?
Yes, I confirm, it worked well even though I entered the bank adress instead (did it several times).
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