I have a supply of USD that accumulated over the years (hard currency) and I wanted to reduce them and fund into my investments in either Rakuten (Yen) or IBKR (USD).
Here are some options I thought of and I am hoping some of you can enlighten me which of these options are more efficient or suggest other options.
1- Bank: SMBC Prestia asked me for over 5000 yen to deposit my USD into my multi-money account, moreover if I am transferring / withdrawing in the future then they will charge 2 yen on each dollar.
2- Exchanging: Going to an exchange agent and losing about 3 yen per each dollar at whatever the current daily price. (fee-1) Take the yennies deposit them at the loca bank then transfer to a brokerage (fee-2) and depending on the brokerage used currency, potentially another exchange (fee-3). Needless to say, that will be a waste
3- Crypto ATM: I am yet to find one but based on my initial research, they charge 5-10% in transaction fees. The good thing is that once the Crypto is on the virtual wallet then transaction fees are minimal. (Unless I am reverting back to FIAT) Apparently, these were around in 2018 but not sure if they are still around nowadays.
4- P2P Coin Exchange: I found some sites online that offer USD to BTC/ETH exchange but most of them operate outside of Japan (the rates are more reasonable though)
5- In-person trading: If I have some friends going to US then I would have exchanged with them without losing exchange rates (WIN/WIN) then deposit these yennies in the bank and funnel to the brokerages. Best but I don't know a lot of people traveling recently due to COVID.
These are all the options I can think of. Which one is the most efficient without loss of capital? Moreover, can you think of something I might have missed? TIA!
