Cryptocurrency and its uses

Voss

I used Coinbase and Ethereum to pay for a domain on Porkbun and it felt somewhat exhilarating for the first 10 minutes. But the fees involved in the transaction, and the middle man role that Coinbase plays didn't sit well with me.

What legitimate (non 'trading'/speculative) uses does cryptocurrency itself have? Buying my domain with Ethereum felt gimmicky. What 'real world' uses have you recently come across for cryptocurrencies? I will always no matter what have to go through several layers of 'know your client' checks and the fees (no matter how small) are an inconvenience.

seriesn

@Voss said:
I used Coinbase and Ethereum to pay for a domain on Porkbun and it felt somewhat exhilarating for the first 10 minutes. But the fees involved in the transaction, and the middle man role that Coinbase plays didn't sit well with me.

What legitimate (non 'trading'/speculative) uses does cryptocurrency itself have? Buying my domain with Ethereum felt gimmicky. What 'real world' uses have you recently come across for cryptocurrencies? I will always no matter what have to go through several layers of 'know your client' checks and the fees (no matter how small) are an inconvenience.

One of the most common usages for us was, when users country is not supported by PayPal, Traditional Debit/Credit Card doesn’t allow foreign transactions or includes extra fee for their end users (payee) or Country doesn’t allow foreign or online transaction.

ndelaespada

Bunch of users out there would do anything to remain as anonymous as possible (to some extend*); while using cryptocurrency doesn’t guarantee that, it certainly minimizes exposure compared to other methods of payment... many others decide to use cryptocurrency as they get paid that way, instead of converting they simply use it to pay for other bills.

terrorgen

International money transfer. Avoiding all middlemen.

sonic

To buy VPS https://talk.lowendspirit.com/discussion/479/wishosting-vps-for-transfer#latest

tgl

anonymity, but this is used by many to avoid paying taxes, get multiple discounts by creating false accounts, some also use it for illegal activities (again, mostly not paying their taxes, money washing, paying for drugs), it can for sure be used to buy things, but considering the price is volatile and the taxes are higher and if you are not a miner, what would be your reason to pay more money for a service when you can get it cheaper with a credit card or paypal? unless you are from north korea, in 99% of the cases a credit card will work

cryptocurrencies can be a risky investment opportunity, but you do not have that many advantages when you are trying to use them as a payment method

anyway, the point is the legal use is limited and mostly for small transactions to purchase services, the big valued transactions are used mainly for illegal activities because it is very easy to hide the people behind them

Janevski

@Voss said: What 'real world' uses have you recently come across for cryptocurrencies?

None.

bibble

There are prepaid cards or live wallet cards such as Uquid (has Monero) that may work out much cheaper.

https://www.cryptocards.io/
https://www.getmonero.org/

FlamingSpaceJunk

@Voss said: What legitimate (non 'trading'/speculative) uses does cryptocurrency itself have?

Sucking up electricity and converting it to heat.

I have abstractly wondered if some are distributed password cracking schemes patterned after scientific projects like Bionic or Folding @Home.