I've been asked by my friend @crypto.piotr to test the service https://steemscan.com/convert.
This service allows you to exchange your steem into USDT, BTC or TRX. What is great is that you don't need to create an account with an exchange to do it. No KYC is necessary to perform the transaction and it is really a piece of cake to do it.
Choose your currency
You simply define how much steem you want to exchange and into what currency. You then need to provide the withdrawal address of the currency that you want to get. For my test, I've used tron.
Authorize the transaction
Once everything is set, you need to create the order by clicking the button at the bottom. The order is created and you need to click „proceed payment“. Steem login is then opened where you can confirm the transaction.
source: SteemScan, a very easy to understand interface
I found a little bug but I believe it is within steem login. You are asked to enter your posting key but you can't make transactions with your posting key, you need the active key. That's why in a second step you will need to enter the active key, in spite of the fact that you are asked for the posting key. This is a bit confusing.
Confirm the transaction
Once you confirm the transaction, it will take a couple of seconds to be visible on steemd. Then it takes another couple of seconds and you will see the coins credited on your tronscan wallet. From beginning to end it took not more than 2 minutes to make the transaction.
How much does it cost?
For such services it's always a bit difficult to understand what such an exchange costs because the fees that are shown, often don't translate the whole reality. That's why I tried to calculate the complete costs of this transaction as follows:
To calculate the costs, I took as basis the coingecko price for Steem in Usd and for Tron in Usd.
According to Coingecko, I would get 0.651 $ for 3 Steem. This amount of USD would buy 40.61 Trx. This is the theoretical spot price. (these were the prices when I made the transaction)
With SteemScan, I received 37.115 Trx. This means that the transaction costs me roughly 3.495 Trx. More or less 10% which I find a little bit expensive. The amount that I exchanged was pretty small and I have been told that the cost structure is identical for any amount. If you exchange bigger amounts, the percentage of the costs will probably be lower.
If I exchanged Steem for Tron on Binance, I might get a better exchange rate. Having a Binance account is however not possible for everybody and for such people, SteemScan is a very interesting alternative to exchange Steem for Trx or BTC.