What it actually costs to get paid in crypto.

Ask what it costs to get paid in crypto and you will be told about the network fee, which on a sensible chain is somewhere around a dollar. That's the smallest of four charges and the only one that happens on a blockchain.

The other three sit between the tokens arriving and money you can pay rent with. Depending on the route you take, the same 2,000 payment costs about three, or about a hundred and twenty. Here is where the difference goes.

The four charges

One: the network fee. Paid to move tokens from the client to you. On Tron or Solana it's cents to about a dollar. On Ethereum mainnet it varies with congestion and can be several dollars or worse. Whoever the invoice says pays it, pays it, which is why the invoice should say.

Two: the conversion. Turning USDT into your own currency. This is the big one, and most of it is invisible, because it's charged partly as a fee and partly as a worse rate.

Three: the withdrawal. Getting the converted money out of the exchange and into a bank. Sometimes a small fixed charge, sometimes a percentage, occasionally free.

Four: the bank at the far end. Receiving fees, and a currency conversion if the money arrives in something your account doesn't hold.

Only the first is on chain. The other three are ordinary financial services doing what they have always done.

The cheap route, itemised

A client pays 2,000 USDT on Tron. You hold a euro account on the same continent as your exchange.

Roughly 3 euros on 1,840, which is around 0.2 percent. That's cheaper than most card payments and considerably cheaper than an international bank transfer.

The expensive route, same payment

Now the same 2,000 USDT, taken the way it's easiest to take it.

• Sent on Ethereum mainnet, because the client's wallet defaulted to it, and the invoice didn't say otherwise. Several dollars, sometimes more.
• Converted using the simple buy and sell button rather than the order book. That's the same trade at a rate marked up by one to two percent, which on 2,000 is 20 to 40, and no line item anywhere calls it a fee.
• Withdrawn through a service charging a percentage rather than a flat amount. Another 1 to 2 percent.
• Arriving as dollars in a euro account, so the bank converts it at their retail rate. Another 1 to 2 percent, plus a receiving charge if it came by international wire.

Stack those and you're between 80 and 130 down on a 2,000 payment. Nothing went wrong. No fraud, no mistake, no volatility. Every step was the default.

The withdrawal fee is not the network fee

These two get treated as one number and they are not the same thing, which is why people compare exchanges on the wrong column.

The network fee is what the chain charges to move tokens. It is public. Anybody can look up what a USDT transfer costs on Tron or Solana this minute, and the answer is cents.

The withdrawal fee is what the exchange charges to send it for you. It's a number somebody chose. Often it is a flat amount per asset per chain, set with room in it, and on a cheap chain that room can be most of the charge. On an expensive chain it may be close to honest, or below cost when the exchange is batching sends.

Two things follow. Compare the withdrawal fee per chain rather than per exchange, because the same exchange can be reasonable on one and absurd on another. And when the fee is flat, the cost of a withdrawal has nothing to do with the amount, which is the whole argument for batching a week of small payments into one send.

The part that is not a fee

Two more things reduce what you keep, and neither appears on any statement.

The gap between arrival and conversion. If you hold a volatile asset for a week before converting, the price is a cost or a windfall. With a stablecoin this is close to nothing, which is the main reason to insist on stablecoins for work you have already done.

Minimums and thresholds. A flat 1.50 withdrawal is nothing on 2,000 and painful on 150. If small payments arrive often, converting and withdrawing weekly rather than per payment can halve the effective cost. The same logic applies to network fees on the client's side, which is why a monthly invoice usually beats four weekly ones.

Five things that actually reduce it

Name the network on the invoice, and pick a cheap one. This single line moves more money than everything else here. Tron and Solana for stablecoins, or a cheap Ethereum layer two if your client works in that world.

Convert on the order book, not the buy button. Same exchange, same account, different screen. The button is convenient and the convenience is priced into the rate.

Withdraw in the currency you spend. Convert once, on the exchange, into your own currency, and withdraw that. Sending dollars to a euro account and letting the bank convert is paying a second spread for no reason.

Keep transfers local. Where they exist, domestic and regional transfers are free or near free and arrive the same day. International wires cost 15 to 30 at the sending end, sometimes more at the receiving end, and an intermediary bank may take a slice in the middle without telling anybody.

Batch. One conversion and one withdrawal a week instead of five of each.

Say it on the invoice, then it is not your cost

Two lines settle most of it before the money moves.

Network fees are payable by the sender. The full invoice amount must arrive.
Payable in USDT on the Tron network (TRC-20).

Without the first, some clients deduct the fee. Without the second, the payment arrives wherever their wallet suggested, and if that's a network your exchange doesn't credit, the cost is not a percentage, it's the whole amount.

Keep the receipts, because some of this is deductible

In most places the costs of receiving payment are a business expense, and the conversion rate on the day of receipt is what sets the income figure. So the useful record for each payment is small and worth keeping at the time:

• the transaction hash and the date it arrived
• the amount in tokens, and its value in your currency at that day's rate
• the conversion fee and the spread you actually got, meaning the rate you received rather than the rate on the screen
• the withdrawal fee and anything the bank took

Two of those are not on any statement you will be sent, which is why they get lost. The difference between the mid market rate and the rate you were given is real money and it never appears as a line called "fee".

Why nobody notices a five percent route

The reason this all goes unmeasured is that the four charges land in four different places: a chain, an exchange, a payment provider and a bank. Each one looks small on its own screen. Nobody adds them up, so nobody notices that a route is costing five percent.

Putting the whole path in one set of books is what fixes that, and it's the thing Orla's crypto side is built around: exchange balances and wallets read alongside bank accounts and cards, transfers between your own places recognised as transfers rather than counted as income and spending, and fees recorded as fees. The invoice half of it, matching an arriving payment to the job it settles, is money in. The rest of it is on the page for freelancers.