Withdraw VIS to Local Bank Account Easily Using Mist Bridge

[#245] Date: 29th January, 2022

Since making my first claim of my earnings on Pegaxy a few weeks ago, what has been on my mind is how to convert the VIS, the game token, back to fiat in my bank account. You see, unlike my peers, I bought my pega with Ringgit, and would like to see that money back in my savings account. No doubt, it takes time to recover my capital and I am giving myself 4 to 6 weeks. This is because we can only claim our earnings every two weeks. Thankfully, I have three rentals to help to speed up the deed, so we shall see.

In my earlier article, I mentioned that I will go through Binance. However, Binance is not allowed to operate legally in Malaysia. Therefore, there is always the threat that my money will be locked with Binance, unable to transfer out. This was a risk I was unwilling to take, but might attempt with a small amount by utilizing VPN.

Then someone told me that I can try Nexo. I do fancy the idea of parking my crypto with Nexo, as there are plans to launch a Nexo card, where holders can spend crypto just by swiping the card like a credit or debit card. With Nexo, the path would be to convert VIS to MATIC, send to Nexo - convert to USDC or USDT. And should I wish to cash out to fiat, I have to convert it to BCH, send BCH to Luno, sell to Ringgit and then withdraw to my local bank. The thing that caused me to hesitate was that the USDT and USDC on Nexo are on ERC20 and might cause me an arm or a leg in gas fee.

Coincidentally, just as I was still trying to figure out which to test and to do it over the weekend, Mist Bridge was introduced. This seemed like a better option, thus I gave it a shot the first chance I had this morning. I will be showing the steps below as this is a proven method and will work if you are withdrawing VIS to a local bank in Malaysia and the Philippines, or wherever you are. VIS is Pegaxy's game token, so it's important to me that I find the best (as in most convenient and cheapest) path to get my hands on my earnings, should I need to have access to more fiat one day.

Step 1: Convert VIS to MATIC
Log in your Polygon Metamask wallet to KyberSwap and convert your VIS to MATIC.

As this was a trial run, I swapped 10 MATIC only. It was an instant transaction.

Step 2: Mist Bridge
Log in your smartBCH Metamask wallet to MistSwap and go to Bridge. Choose the network you want to bridge from, which in this case is Polygon and the token, MATIC.

The destination to bridge to is smartBCH. There are no other options, for your information. Type in the amount of MATIC that you wish to bridge. In this test, I was doing just 10 MATIC. With smartBCH as the destination, my new token is BCH, the smart version. Basically, Mist Bridge was introduced so that investors from other blockchains can easily move their funds over to smartBCH. 

A QR Code was provided for me to deposit my 10 MATIC. I was doing this transaction on my desktop, so I had to log in via mobile phone to my Polygon Metamask wallet to scan this QR Code to transfer 10 MATIC to that address provided.

The transaction was completed in just a couple of minutes and my smartBCH wallet soon reflected my new deposit.

Step 3: hop.cash

In case you are not following, my VIS is now smartBCH. So, to convert it to Layer 1 BCH, I need to use hop.cash. Make sure to select smartBCH to BCH. Last night, I went to the hop.cash Telegram to ask if it was possible for me to hop from smartBCH directly to Luno account. I was told that it's possible to send it to an exchange address, which is what Luno is. However, how long it takes an exchange to acknowledge my deposit is entirely up to the exchange.   

This morning, I took the leap of faith to hop from smartBCH directly to my Luno wallet. Well, it was not that smooth sailing, unfortunately. It was just poor timing as the send and receive transactions of a few tokens, including Bitcoin Cash, were affected.

I waited and waited but it did not arrive until six hours later, after Blockchair.com had said the transaction was successful. 

Step 4: Luno - The last mile

For Malaysians who wish to cash out to fiat, Luno is a good path to take. From here, I can sell my BCH to Ringgit and submit a withdrawal request to my bank account that is on record with Luno.

For the purpose of this article, I did not do this last step because it's the weekend. Should I make the transfer on weekends, there will be a delay and I would only receive my bank deposit on a workday. I wanted to avoid having my money stuck in the queue, so now I am still holding BCH in my Luno wallet.

For friends in the Philippines, they can utilize Coins.ph here, instead of Luno. In fact, no matter where you are, you can hop to any BCH address. Transaction is fast and the fee is just 0.1%. You can also park your BCH with crypto.com, which I plan to do once their Visa card is available for use in Malaysia. 

I hope my little trial run here works well for you, too. If you have a more seamless option, I am happy to learn about it.

*Lead photo by ROMAN ODINTSOV from Pexels