Bitcoin enthusiasts are abuzz with an astonishing tale of a transaction in The Netherlands that spanned over four weeks. It appears that even a seemingly simple transfer of value between two European towns can necessitate a collaborative effort involving the central bank, the military, and police units.
Word on the internet is it would cost a few dollars for bitcoin to transfer any amount of value, how much does it cost to do it the traditional banking system way?
A bitcoin activist known as @VandelayBTC on Twitter recently pointed out a huge undertaking by De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB), where they executed a sophisticated operation to simply transfer funds between two storage locations.
According to a report from local business media outlet NOS, the Central Bank of The Netherlands dedicated approximately an entire month to complete the transfer of assets from Haarlem to Zeist.
During the process which took about 4 weeks to complete, De Nederlandsche Bank covertly relocated 200,000 kilograms of gold bars and gold coins from the DNB vault in Haarlem to the newly established DNB Cash Center in Zeist.
With minimal fanfare, the operation was meticulously orchestrated, relying on the coordination and security expertise of both military units and the police to safeguard this transaction.
Bitcoiners highlighted the stark contrast by pointing out that in the bitcoin world, a transfer of similar nature would be completed within a mere 10 minutes, with transaction fees amounting to just a few dollars at most. This observation prompted to jest at governments and central banks for expending substantial public resources, while the exact total costs borne by taxpayers remained undisclosed.
Despite bitcoin skeptics’ point of view, who accuse bitcoin of being “too inefficient” in terms of environmental effects and energy consumption, this is a shining example of how a transfer of value over the bitcoin network would be much simpler, several orders of magnitude cheaper, and much safer.
