What a BTC to XMR swap costs here

The three components

The swap page shows one result: how much XMR you receive for the BTC you send. That number is built from three parts, and each of them is visible before you commit anything.

First, the exchange rate. The maker takes the Kraken XMR/BTC reference rate and adds a markup, currently around 1.2 to 1.4 percent. The markup is the maker's entire margin: it pays for replacing the XMR it sells and for holding inventory on two chains. The exact percentage is shown live on the swap page, labelled Markup, next to the Kraken reference rate. It moves with the market, so read it there rather than here.

Second, the Bitcoin network fees. An atomic swap needs a real Bitcoin transaction that locks your BTC in a 2-of-2 output. In the web app, that lock transaction is built by a taker running on our server, so the flow has two Bitcoin transactions on your side: your browser wallet (Unisat) sends the swap amount plus a small lock gas to the taker, paying its own miner fee for that transfer, and the taker then broadcasts the lock transaction and pays its miner fee out of the lock gas. The swap summary lists both amounts before you sign. In the eigenwallet desktop app there is a single lock transaction from your own wallet. Either way, the miner fees depend on how busy Bitcoin is at that moment and are not part of the quoted rate.

Third, the Monero network fees. The maker pays the fee on the transaction that locks the XMR. When the swap completes, your side sweeps that locked XMR to the address you gave, and the sweep pays a small Monero fee out of the locked amount. Monero fees are a tiny fraction of the amounts involved.

There is no platform fee, no withdrawal fee and no developer tip.

Minimum and maximum

A swap needs a minimum for a mechanical reason: the Bitcoin lock, and the transaction that later spends it, each cost a miner fee, so a tiny swap would be worth less than the fees it generates. On top of that floor, this maker keeps its minimum at a small fixed dollar value and adjusts the BTC figure as the BTC price moves, so the minimum you see is a BTC amount that changes over time. It is displayed on the swap page, in BTC and in dollars.

The maximum is a different constraint. The maker can only lock XMR it holds and has not already committed to another swap, so the maximum is derived from the XMR balance the maker has available, converted to BTC at the current rate. It drops while swaps are in progress and comes back when they complete. If you need more than the maximum at a given moment, run several swaps in sequence.

Both limits come from the maker at page load. The swap page is the source of truth; this text only explains where the numbers come from.

Timing and why

A swap here takes roughly 30 to 60 minutes end to end. The time goes to block confirmations, not to anything the maker chooses.

The maker waits for one confirmation on your Bitcoin lock before locking its XMR. A Bitcoin block takes about ten minutes on average but can take much longer, and a low miner fee puts a transaction at the back of the queue. The swap then waits for ten Monero confirmations, about two minutes per block, so roughly twenty minutes. Only then are the keys exchanged and the XMR becomes spendable at your address.

A higher Bitcoin miner fee is the one lever you have: it shortens the wait for the first confirmation. The Monero part cannot be sped up. In exchange for the wait, no custodian ever holds both sides of the trade: your BTC sits in a 2-of-2 lock with a refund path, not in someone's exchange account. The refund path and its timelocks are described on the How page.

How to check you got the quoted rate

Because the rate is a markup over a public reference, you can verify it yourself. The swap page shows the Kraken reference as an XMR/BTC price (how much BTC one XMR costs) and, separately, the markup. The maker's price is the reference multiplied by one plus the markup, and the XMR you receive is the BTC you send divided by the maker's price. Redo that arithmetic with the numbers on the page and it should match the amount shown as You receive, give or take market movement between two readings.

Your all-in cost above the Kraken reference is then the markup applied to your amount, plus the Bitcoin miner fees listed in the swap summary, plus the small Monero sweep fee. There is nothing else.

The same check works on any quote from any service: one that shows a rate but not its reference price is asking you to trust that the spread is fair. Here the reference is named and the spread is a number on the page.