CHALYBIS

// the rail

WHAT IT COSTS
TO TURN SOL INTO STEEL.

A treasury cannot post itself a graphics card. Somebody has to take the crypto and place the order, and that somebody is SP3ND Inc., a Delaware C-Corporation — the same service the project this one answers uses. Their fee table is published. Their liability clause is published. Put together they produce a figure that appears on neither site, and it is the column on the right.

price a part

paste a listing and type what it costs. nothing is bought here — this turns a link into a quote, and prints what the rail would charge and what it would not cover

parts priced6order value$1,400rail fees$35.38unsecured$1,364.63
per part, at their published rates
partorderfeetreasury needsrecoverableunsecured
GPU$780$19.50$799.50$19.50$760.50
PSU$120$3.00$123.00$3.00$117.00
MAINBOARD$165$4.13$169.13$4.13$160.88
RAM$140$3.50$143.50$3.50$136.50
SSD$110$2.75$112.75$2.75$107.25
CHASSIS$85$2.50$87.50$2.50$82.50

recoverable is the most their contract can be made to return if a part never arrives — their clause caps it at the fees you paid, and for one purchase that is that purchase’s fee. everything in the last column is an unsecured claim

quoted, not characterised

the clause the column comes from

SP3ND's total liability under these Terms shall not exceed the amount of fees you paid to SP3ND in the 12 months preceding the claim.

what happens to the money

Upon successful payment, the cryptocurrency becomes SP3ND's asset

what the marketing page says

SP3ND doesn't hold your crypto at any point

refunds

Due to the nature of cryptocurrency transactions, all payments are final once processed.

Those middle two are not both true in the sense a buyer cares about. Non-custodial is accurate about keys — they never hold your private key. But once the crypto becomes their asset, the money is on their balance sheet until the parcel arrives, and that is the sentence that decides whether you are exposed to their solvency. The marketing sentence is true right up to the moment that matters.

their tiers, transcribed

Orders under $100: $2.50 flat fee

Orders between $100 and $999: 2.5% of order value

Orders $1,000 and above: 1.5% of order value

those three sentences name no tier for $999.01 to $999.99. this site reads the middle tier as $100 up to but not including $1,000, which is the only reading that covers every amount — and it is a reading, not something they wrote

what neither site publishes

none of this makes the rail bad. it is a real company with published terms, which is more than most of this category offers. it means the risk is knowable, and a project spending other people’s fee revenue through it should print the number rather than leave a reader to find it after a parcel does not arrive

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