As an update to my learning experiences, so far I have now made multiple International Wire Transfers to Coinsetter & Bitfinex.

Both have been smooth, Coinsetter to (if I recall Bank in Maldive) was smooth, the instructions worked perfect and the money arrived in my account same day (once my bank processed after the weekend.) My bank (Bank of America) charged $45, and although I had no fee on the other end for first transfer, after that fee of $30.

The transfer to Bitfinex had a couple minor hichups; first the SWIFT code in their instructions was not recognized by my bank, and I could not find the bank through the provided address either. I e-mails Bitfinex's help and received a response acceptably quick with their head-office SWIFT code, that one was recognized.

The second minor thing was when I enter the bank's country as Taiwan, I received a warning that that country has in the past been "slow to process" and payments could be delayed. That could make you worry, but we are talking about "same-day" wire. My transfer arrived ready to use in my account in maybe at most a day & a half. Same fees as other end.

I finally got some level of verification on Kraken (with Canada address) but no access yet to do an "Interac" transfer (easy way to pay - like debit card). I didn't investigate their wire transfer since At this point I'll stick with Bitfinex for most stuff.

As for Coinbase; after several week's I'm still limited to $200 per day buy and those take a week to be available + since it doesn't have any functions as an exchange except market price, I have my 0.8 coin I should get tomorrow then I'm done with them.

Bitfinex is my favorite for the reasons I mentioned above, but plus they have some cool advanced features. One which I particularly like since I'm trying to accumulate bitcoins hoping the price will rise continuously over time. They let you lend your bitcoins (or cash or LTC) on the SWAP market. You offer to lend your coins at a rate that you bid (just like exchange people bid / ask prices for the swaps) and you set duration (so if you want easy access to your bitcoins you can offer 2-3 days). This is a "safe" investment because on the "high-risk" margin side where the borrowers are, they don't have direct access to your coins..

So if you plan to just hold your coins, lend them out and you get a few fractions of a bitcoin every night added to your account. You bid a daily rate; something typical right now is 0.0175% per day (I've gotten 0.025% best - I haven't quite figured out what drives the SWAP demand, it dropped when price of BTC went up, which is somewhat opposite to what I might have expected). Anyhow even at 0.0175% per day (sounds tiny) but compound that for a year is you calculate as APR = (1.000175^365 - 1) = 6.6% - Now they take 25% of your profit as fees, so that leaves you with about 5% per year interest... Yeah not a way to get rich, but try finding that rate in a Bank savings account, plus you still get all the capital gains on the bitcoins themselves.