The only way for me to convert my crypto assets before was through coins.ph. It was convenient for me as I could deposit directly to my BPI account. So it was a way for me to remit money to the Philippines without going through the bank, western union or money gram. I was relieved that there's a new a cheaper way to send money. It's not an exchange like Poloniex. The process is to send your BTC to the wallet in your account, and you can convert this to PHP anytime. You can again convert it back to BTC, but the spread is just too wide nowadays to try and profit from it. I would rate this a 10 out of 10 as efficient, reliable and safe. Unfortunately, they only plan to support BTC.
Another option, but a little expensive, is Localbitcoins. Because in order to create an advertisement to trade, you need to deposit first 0.4 BTC and back in 2015~2016, I didn't have this much. I still don't have it today, so this option is really not for me. But it should've been good as a person in the Philippines could trade with me in Vietnam. Theoretically, he/she would deposit the funds to my BPI account then I would release the BTC on escrow in my Localbitcoins account to the buyer. It looks simple, but I've read a lot of shady deals on this platform. Buyers & sellers claiming they sent the money or never received the money and Localbitcoins would be giving back or sending the btc nonetheless. But, gladly I never tried it so I really can't rate it. You can only trade BTC in this platform.
The next is Remitano. It has local sites in several countries, and it's similar to Localbitcoins. The difference, aside from able to buy or sell BTC, you can also sell ETH and USDT. I just registered yesterday and I'll try selling 50 USDT. I'll get back to you later about the trade, when someone has decided to purchase my USDT offer with Philippine Peso. I think I can also offer the same to Vietnamese as they are also listed here. I'll see and I hope I don't get ripped off.
The last option, and I'm glad that they're still around, is Buybitcoin.ph. This was a close competitor to Coins.ph but I found that they pay out less fiat from BTC than Coins.ph and since I'm not verified, I couldn't trade more than 0.001 BTC. Back then, I needed to have a Philippine mobile number, which was impossible since I stay in Vietnam. When I signed in today to check, I found out that they can accept my Vietnam number and got verified already. I'm just waiting for them to confirm my other details. They can also withdraw the fiat to any major bank in the Philippines, so I could easily send fiat to my BPI account. Another exciting news is they plan to include ETH, XRP, and BCH as the tradedable cryptos you can convert to pesos. I sure hope that they include these in during the 1st quarter of 2018.
As we all know, the network congestion with BTC nowadays is becoming unreasonable. Transactions with the minimum fee are placed at the back of the queue to accommodate the other transactions with larger fees. And due to the fact that each block is about 20 mins, and Chain.so reports that its already 187 tx/min and an astounding 278k unconfirmed transactions as of this writing, it's becoming impossible for small bitcoin holders like me to send my BTC to coins.ph to convert to fiat. Hashflare sent my minimum withdrawal of 0.01 btc 2 weeks ago. I received it in my wallet on the last day it was about to be deleted from the mem pool - 7 days after. Then I sent another transaction last Saturday with a transaction fee of 0.0002 BTC. And you guessed it right, the receiver doesn't have it yet until now. The funny thing about that transaction, is I sent it using my hashnest wallet. Just so you know, Antpool owns Hashnest. But even though, they still can't prioritize internal transactions because they want the larger fees first. So, with Buybitcoin's initiative to integrate XRP, ETH & BCH into their system, it would be a big help for small miners like me to send money back home.
Finally, on the network congestion of BTC, I hope the devs & miners could come to an agreement on how to solve the transaction backlog. I invested with BTC because I believed it was the solution to send money across borders that is safe, cheap and secure. Now, it's just safe and secure. It would be better for me to send fiat as the transaction fee is just around US$7 for a US$500 transaction. I offer 2 options, either have the code select blocks by timestamp, first in first out, regardless of transaction fee OR implement the Lightning Network or something similar.
Until next time!
Sources:
-Western Union, Lightning Network, Buybitcoin.ph, Coins.ph, Remitano, Localbitcoin
BCH : 1F72jSnZadZ3xZCafZLP542vj743mqDFNe
LTC : LZWyPebkPt1nY9Mw7VUwJqtWmX7moEi7Dn
