So, among my real life friends, many do not believe that the money is real. They want to see that I can indeed start from the Steemit play money and have it show up in my bank account. Fine. Today's task is to take 2 of my SBD's to the bank.

This is mainly prompted by my wife, who wants to see it become real. I have to laugh, because @dickturpin mentioned a funny joke to me in discord chat: "Don't fall for that. It starts with 10$...."

Prerequisites

For this post, I am going to assume that you can use Coinbase, which may not apply for some countries. And I will be using BlockTrades. This is a very convenient service that can do the swap for you and deposit the target currency to the wallet you specify.

Also, rather than Coinbase itself, we will be using its exchange at GDAX, which uses the same login, and where you can trade with no fees!

Because Coinbase/GDAX can take Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ethereum (ETH), and Litecoin (LTC), I looked specifically for how much you get when using BlockTrades to convert to those currencies.

Note that BlockTrades supports Bitcoin Cash, and the linked post has details about how to specify addresses, which we'll use later. (Hint, hint, guess who wins in lowest fee?)

So yeah, I made a spreadsheet of what the BlockTrades UI was offering in exchange for 1 SBD, and I have it here:

First column has what BlockTrades offered, Second column is USD price of each token. Third column is the product to bring these to USD terms. Then the rest compares to what the reported USD value of SBD is.

In terms of USD value, BCH is a clear winner, though even with an amount as low as 2 SBD, I am projecting it will eat away about 4% USD value in the process of transferring. Of course this spreadsheet data is now obsolete given the volatility, but it gives a good idea of what to use (BCH).

Minimum Trades

As I was carrying out the steps to follow, I noticed that there is a minimum order of 0.01 BCH for sell orders, and 10 USD for buy orders on the USD/BCH GDAX exchange. Keep this in mind!

Summary Of Steps

Alright, so let's get us some smelly FIAT! The steps:

1. Get BCH Address to deposit BCH into Coinbase.
2. Use BlockTrades to transfer SBD to this BCH address.
3. Go to GDAX to set a LIMIT sell order to exchange for USD
4. Withdraw USD from GDAX to bank.

Get BCH Address from GDAX

Go to the GDAX BCH exchange here. You will see a "Deposit" button, like in the following picture.

In the screen that pops out, select the "BCH Address" tab, and you should see something like this.

The referenced post from BlockTrades tells us that for deposits both old and new addresses works, so copy the address underlined.

Transfer With BlockTrades

Now to the BlockTrades website. If you wish, I saw a recommendation for registering with BlockTrades so that you can see your history and also pending transactions, which is pretty useful for peace of mind. So I went ahead and did so. Otherwise, don't worry, it'll work just the same.

From Blocktrades, you select Steem Dollar on the left, and Bitcoin Cash on the right. I set the amount of SBD to 2, and it shows how much you expect to get on the right. Paste in the address you got from the first step, and hit "Get Deposit Address", as shown below.

You should now see a pop up with two options, where the default uses "SteemConnect". This is an awesome addition since last I've used it, as it makes the process much less error-prone! So yes, go ahead and input your Steemit user and hit "Transfer Using SteemConnect".

What's nice is the warning about what the transfer fee will be. We roughly already know from the initial page, so we proceed. Follow the screens of SteemConnect, making sure to use your "Active" key. This is the key you would have needed if you were to send funds via the Steemit website.

If you signed up with email on BlockTrades, it will show you the Transactions in a section in the main page like so:

(It might show you even if you didn't register for just this session. Not sure though.)

Note there's a link where it says "Transaction ID". You can use this to see progress on the transaction. The funds will not show up in GDAX until "3 confirmations" are reached, which will take about 30 minutes.

Muttering to self. Hum. Twiddling my thumbs until I get the funds. I sent this off at around 8:46p. It's 9:28p and it's still at 2 confirmations. Just... bit more... refreshes...? I'll go get some tea. Be right back.

...

Muttering to self again. Hum. It's 3 confirmations, but it's still not in GDAX.

...

Ok. It's there at 9:58p. Got worried for a second there :). Let us continue!

GDAX Limit Sell Order

Back to GDAX. By now your funds should have shown up. On the left you'll see various options.

• "MARKET" means market buy/sell, and you can just take whatever the lowest asking price is for a buy, or the highest bid price for a sell, and it fulfills immediately, but with a small fee of 0.25% which you can find listed here.
• "LIMIT" means you set your price, and will be filled if there are any takers (e.g. if price moves past what you set). This has no fee, but you might be waiting for a bit for the market to move. With the current volatility of the market, it won't be long. You can always cancel the order and re-do it.

Now for what follows, I hit the problem of minimum orders. So I had to buy some BCH before being able to sell the rest. So if you're keeping tabs on the number, it gets a bit wonky. But I'll let you know the final amounts.

Hit "LIMIT", then click "SELL". You can then click the amount of BCH you have to have it auto-populate into the Amount section. Now look slightly right to the ORDER BOOK with the red numbers. These are sell orders that have already been placed. Go to the bottom and match the lowest one. You can click the price and have that fill into the Limit Price box for you.

Then hit "PLACE SELL ORDER".

Now you should see your order in the book, and in the list of OPEN ORDERS. And now you wait. For me it took around 5 minutes. Then it shows as "filled" and credits your USD amount.

Withdraw to Bank

Finally, the last step is to withdraw to the bank. At the top left, you may have guessed that you can hit the "WITHDRAW" button.

You'll see an option for BANK ACCOUNT (no fee) and BANK WIRE (faster, but with fee), which you can see here. This part is pretty straightforward. Enter the amount, if you have 2 factor, enter that code if applicable, and hit withdraw.

Note that for BANK ACCOUNT ACH Transfer, it says it may take up to 10 calendar days. That's FIAT banking for you ;).

Final Amounts

I wrote 8 USD for the cash out, but that's not what I actually got from the trades. I started with 2 SBD, and in the end I ended with 9.05$, so around 4.5 USD per SBD, which I now am comparing to 4.88 price. About what was predicted.

Alternate Routes

I chose this route because it is very easy to do. However, for larger amounts, it may not be optimal. If you have crypto-to-crypto exchanges like Bittrex or Binance, you may opt to do the trade yourself from SBD to BCH. The one issue with this is that there is a flat withdraw fee. I've listed them here:

Unsurprisingly, BCH wins again here. But you'd want at least 100 USD worth of currency to even consider this route. Note also that for larger amounts, BlockTrades' rate becomes more favorable as well. At some point I will do a full comparison of fees using both methods, but it seems BlockTrades may even be okay for larger amounts!

A general rule of thumb is that the larger the amount, the lower the fee that you will pay relative to the amount.

Summary

I know there are probably many tutorials on this matter already, but I hope there may be some things that you may not have known.

Another fun tip for GDAX: Withdrawing Crypto from GDAX wallets is FREE! Coinbase reimburses the transaction fees. And you can transfer from Coinbase wallets to GDAX wallets via GDAX for no fee also. This is very helpful for buying and swapping crypto for very little fees in total!

Hope this may have helped some folks for which this is relevant. Happy to answer any questions you might have below! Also, to who may be skimming-- Please don't make me cash out more SBD :)

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