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Using a brick and mortar OTC brokerage in Montréal, Quebec
1122 sats \ 4 comments \ @leo 14 May Travel
I recently came across a brick and mortar Bitcoin OTC brokerage in the old town of Montréal in Quebec. It was housed in a tiny space in a touristy area, advertising rates for various cryptocurrencies and fiat currencies. I had previously mainly encountered such places in Asia, so I was curious to try it out.
The whole process took about five minutes. I walked in, stated my interest in selling 500 CAD worth of Bitcoin. I was told that Lightning was generally an option, but not that day. I was shown a BTCPay Server checkout page. I scanned it with Bluewallet, selected my onchain fee and made the payment.
I was then asked for my phone number, name and country of residence, but not any form of ID. I was given the cash without waiting for confirmation and headed out.
Cash received: 500 CAD Sats paid: 361323 SAT Onchain fee: 438 SAT Rate given: 138,380 CAD/BTC Market rate: 144,653.00 CAD/BTC
That's about a 2.9% markup over Shakepay, or a 3.3% markup over Bull Bitcoin, so I likely won't do this too regularly, but given my difficulty of finding somebody locally who is willing to buy sats peer-to-peer, like I would in Vancouver or Europe, the OTC brokerage is my only option for getting cash.
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54 sats \ 2 replies \ @optimism 14 May
I wonder why the exchange rates are so insane with all the physical things (including the ATM I ran into on Tocumen terminal 2.)
Perhaps no one is using it? Was there anyone else there?
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100 sats \ 1 reply \ @leo OP 15 May
I do very much wonder about the rates at ATMs, those are absolutely insane and I suspect it's primarily scam/extortion victims using them.
But 4% isn't insanely high for a tourist if you imagine that my old bank would charge me 3% for a foreign currency transaction, or at least 2% for an ATM withdrawal. There are some businesses that will give me a 5% discount on using cash over card, so it could be worth it for me to buy cash at a 4% fee over a prepaid debit card at 0%.
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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @optimism 16 May
The airport atm was 8%, which is truly crazy. The 2% for an ATM withdrawal is theft and 3% for foreign currency is that too. But banks be laughing all the way to the bank.
I'm sure that p2p with friends is better than any business though. Just need to make more friends all the time, which is anyway a great goal to have.
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49 sats \ 0 replies \ @398ja 15 May
I remember buying bitcoin in Montreal, 11 years ago, while on holidays. It was at l'ambassade du bitcoin. I still hold them.
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