Using a brick and mortar OTC brokerage in Montréal, Quebec \ stacker news ~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.

54 sats \ 1 reply \ @optimism 19h

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?

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @leo OP 16h

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%.

7 sats \ 0 replies \ @398ja 10h

I remember buying bitcoin in Montreal, 11 years ago, while on holidays. It was at l'ambassade du bitcoin. I still hold them.