The Hive account@hiveengine exchange affords us a way to trade into or out of Hive. It has been great and I don't normally use Bitcoin for this but the trades would lose $50 on other trades out of Hive because the buy prices are lower than the market value on KY-jelly C exchanges.

But man I need to have a $1100 in Bitcoin in order to withdraw any of it? The fees which can be from $2 or more depending on how the UTXOs are are one thing but this is just awful.

There are UTXOs and depending how the money ends up in Hive-Engine, the transaction costs to them can be highly variable. I wrote about how the variable costs of Bitcoin fees. The analogue is that it costs more to send eight quarters than two one dollar coins. Whereas most transactions on Bitcoin take one input, and then have two outputs. It could potentially have more. One could deposit 0.001 BTC ten times to a single address. Then it will cost significantly more to move that money than if it were a single deposit of 0.01. As a courtesy, try to keep things down to two deposits. Deposit $10, and half of that will be a fee but you can see how it works and at least you wont have lost so much if you royally screw up. Then you can deposit the rest.

The trading market is rather inefficient. Liquidity is awful on many trading pairs on Hive-Engine so you end up with far more losses due to the difference between the best buy price and the CoinMarketcap price than you do with withdrawal fees. There are a few that are better though.

Binance

I could go to Binance or alike but these guys are famous for acting all cool until you deposit. And then, oh they suddenly stop believing you are who you really are when obviously the funds came from the person logged in. Then they will make up games you have to play where if you lose, they keep your funds. Nice setup for them eh?

Hive Engine It Is!

Getting out at the 6000 Hive level, if you trade into Litecoin and back you lose 19% of the value. So on average that is a 9.5% loss. Converting one way or another you will lose 9.5%. Now for Bitcoin you lose an average of 4%. Other coins are worse, Ethereum 11% each direction. With Bitcoin Cash it is far worse. You stand to lose pretty much all of your 6000 Hive losing 99% to market friction.

At the 6000 Hive level, you are far better off trading for Bitcoin, and making a deposit in order to get you over the 0.01 BTC minimum withdrawal amount.