Ask HN: What's the best way to move $1M around the world?

4 points by EdwinLarkin ↗ HN
I sold my real estate and would like to relocate. I have not picked a country but i'd love to know what's the best way to move this money around to a new country of my choice.

7 comments

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Crypto stable coin Gold bars USD cash in a suitcase Transferwise
A few options come to mind

1) Transferwise. You'll pay around a 1% fee, but other than that should be pretty straight forward.

2) Bitcoin / Crypto. You'll need to either give a lot of information or do the purchases/sells in small lots (5-10k)

3) Wire Transfer. Less places support this, but generally pretty cheap.

Bitcoin/crypto just creates unnecessary hoops to jump through in a situation like this. Transferring money between banks is common and straight forward versus converting your funds to crypto, finding an exchange that operates in your destination country then cashing it out just to put it back into a bank account.
Deposit into a bank that has a presence in both your current country and the country you are moving into. Any other method will likely cause you more headache.
Bank transfer.

When you open a new back account in you new country, remember to aks the SWIFT/BIC code of your new bank and IBAN number of your new bank account. Then you give SWIFT/BIC and IBAN to your your old bank and ask them to do the transfer. Because it's so big sum, you probably have to do it in person and show ID.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Bank_Account_Num...

https://www.iban.com/iban-checker

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_9362

In the new bank they have to ask the origin of your money and you just tell them it's your own money and your are moving. Because it's back transfer, they don't have to hold it until they verify the origin like might do if you try some hard to trace method.

Cash in a suitcase might be illegal in your destination of choice.
Set up a bank account in your new destination with a bank that is present in both countries. For this amount, arrange the transfer and supporting documents in person in your local bank, and make sure they run it with the foreign branch to avoid hiccups.

I would definitely not use crypto for stuff like that.