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Is this really true? I buy stuff with crypto all the time. It's how I learned about crypto in the first place- back ~2015, I ordered legitimate, had-a-prescri
by Baeocystin 5y ago
Is this really true? I buy stuff with crypto all the time.
It's how I learned about crypto in the first place- back ~2015, I ordered legitimate, had-a-prescription medication for my father from overseas using bitcoin, as it was the only way I could get it, as the even-with-insurance price in the states was beyond our means. Wound up doing so for several years, and it was much easier than dealing with the 'normal' ways of payment. A lot of the things I order from overseas in general I pay for in crypto, simply because it's cheaper & easier than doing regular currency conversions. I'm talking about regular things, like specialty foods, or everyday items I can't find in the states. Nothing even close to grey market or sketchy. Just regular financial transactions, using crypto.
I'm sure by numbers my <$100-equivalent purchases are small potatoes, but how is that not also true for regular money? There are billions of dollars of capital sloshing around in the markets, but that doesn't make my personal-level spending not useful.
- OOPMan 5y agoAre you being intentionally daft? Or do you genuinely fail to realise thay there is a difference between you and small number of other people relative to the global population using cryptocurrency as money as compared to everyone on the planet doing so?
- Baeocystin 5y agoIdeas start from somewhere, and take time to spread.
- 908087 5y agoUnless something major changes, I'm guessing we can expect to continue hearing about how it's "still early days" and "just takes time to catch on" another decade from now.
- sidlls 5y agoAnd most of them never get anywhere meaningful.
- samplatt 5y agoThey certainly don't when they have have otherwise intelligent people using strong emotive language telling them that they're not important. There's facing statistical facts, and then there's just being flat-out negative.
- sidlls 5y agoThe statistical facts warrant a strongly negative outlook.
- temptemptemp111 5y agoI think they're literally blind. It is biblical.
- joshuahaglund 5y agoHave you heard of PayPal? Because i buy things internationally and pay with PayPal all the time. If I don't receive the order, I can contest and cancel the charge (sometimes). And there's no transaction fee that I'm aware of. Do you buy $5 items internationally? Because the bulk of my international orders are low value items. If I have to spend more on a transaction fee than the item costs, I'm not gonna buy the item. Oh, lightning you say? You really think I should trust that more than pay pal?
- Baeocystin 5y agohttps://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/paypal-fees https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/paypal-fees https://www.fool.com/the-ascent/research/average-credit-card-processing-fees-costs-america/ https://www.fool.com/the-ascent/research/average-credit-card... There are significant international transaction fees. There are also merchant fees involved for sellers. Much like the ubiquitous credit card fees, you may not see it line-itemized on your bill, but the costs are absolutely part of the price you see at checkout. Literally everything I buy with crypto, the crypto network fees are less than what I would have paid otherwise.
- joshuahaglund 5y agoI guess my point is that with PayPal, as a buyer, the transaction fees are seamlessly included in the price. With crypto, it depends. Which coin? Which wallet? Which seller or marketplace? I'm curious if you care to share more about your transactions, that cost less using crypto. Now, if you're saying that you bought at $100 and it's at $1000, and you "paid less" that way, that's just this stage of the ponzi scheme's doing, not an inherent feature of the network that lowers costs.
- Baeocystin 5y agoOh, for sure, there's plenty of work to still be done on the crypto side of things. Regarding which coins I use, it's mostly Bitcoin Cash or Doge. No funny accounting or anything. The network transaction fees are readily available: https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/dogecoin-transactionfees.html https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/dogecoin-transactionfee... https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin%20cash-transactionfees.html https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin%20cash-transact...
- frosted-flakes 5y agoDon't all online payment systems use cryptography?
- perl4ever 5y agoI don't know what jurisdiction you are in, but as far as I know, crypto is treated as a capital asset in the US, not a currency, so I'm unprepared to deal with the tax consequences of using it as a currency. If I paid for things with it then every transaction would require calculating capital gains/losses. And it's far worse than conventional assets like stocks because at least the brokers track that stuff for you.
- Baeocystin 5y agoYou're absolutely right that the current US tax laws are a real problem for crypto-as-a-currency. I do expect better law to prevail over time.
- rglullis 5y agoWe can have the cake and eat it too: it's called stablecoin. 1. Park your ETH/WBTC/BAT (a whole bunch of other tokens) on a smart contract as collateral so that you can withdraw a token that is pegged to the USD, or just go to a regular exchange to buy the stablecoin. 2. Use this token to make transactions online. Tax advantages: you are not selling your volatile crypto, so you don't have to declare any sales or profits. On the other hand, if the crypto you place loses so much in value to the point where the smart contract liquidates you, you don't need to return the stable token and you can get a tax write-off.
- davidcbc 5y agoThis isn't how tax laws work. Exchanging one cryptocurrency for another is a taxable event. You are committing tax fraud.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- sidlls 5y agoNo offense, but you and the few dozens (exaggerating here for emphasis) of others around the world who use crypto as a currency regularly just don’t even matter in the context of the world’s financial systems.
- Baeocystin 5y agoNo offense taken. I know I am currently in the (significant) minority. But it's been six years, now, since using crypto has been a genuine net benefit for me, and this is completely outside of any kind of monetary speculation. That's not nothing. Is it a useful comparison, one guy that works in tech vs. the world's financial systems? If using crypto helps me, it can help other people, too. That's enough for a real start, all on its own.
- tshaddox 5y agoCool so just ban it without worrying about who it hurts because you’ve literally explicitly declared that they don’t matter.
- sidlls 5y agoWell, yes, if banning something considered harmful for the vast majority hurts a few, at some point it's worth considering. The line differs for everyone to be sure. For crypto"currency" in particular I'm not sure an outright ban is merited. It sure does seem more useful for criminal organizations and trading casinos to part unsophisticated "investors" (idealists?) from their cash than for actual people to use to conduct business, though.
- ProjectArcturis 5y agoLike... Why? Why pay $10-25 in transaction fees for a $100 purchase? Unless it's illegal, it's far easier and cheaper to do currency conversion with a credit card.
- Baeocystin 5y agoI'm not using bitcoin. I mostly use bitcoin cash and doge, where fees are in the 50 cent - dollar or two range.
- lmm 5y agoWhat proportion of bitcoin use do you think is legitimate purchases versus crime? I suspect it's a long way on the wrong side of Blackstone's ratio.
- Baeocystin 5y agoSpecifically for bitcoin- my hunch is one of the main drivers of its valuation is Chinese-owned capital trying to find its way outside of mainland China, as the ability of the average middle-class or wealthier Chinese person to have assets outside of state oversight is highly constrained. I do think that coins with more reasonable transaction fees are actually used as normal, boring currency a lot more than crypto-naysayers think. I also think the rampant speculation going on over coins like Doge is nuts, but it's worthwhile keeping in mind that if you're just using crypto as an exchange of value, with the purchase of the coin and its use at the same time, it doesn't really matter what the spot price is.
- lmm 5y ago> my hunch is one of the main drivers of its valuation is Chinese-owned capital trying to find its way outside of mainland China, as the ability of the average middle-class or wealthier Chinese person to have assets outside of state oversight is highly constrained. Where by constrained you mean it's a crime, right? Obviously you can argue that in this specific instance making it easier for criminals to evade law enforcement is a morally good thing, but cryptocurrency does the same thing for any profitable crime in any country, which is why I see it as such a negative thing overall.
- Baeocystin 5y ago>Where by constrained you mean it's a crime, right? Not in the way you mean it, no. Otherwise industrial-scale bitcoin miners, situated near power plants, wouldn't be able to operate in the open at all, yet they do. Without making any moral judgement one way or the other, China works differently than is generally understood by the West. // I don't want to downplay criminal use of crypto- its use in cryptolocker-type malware is a real problem, for example. I do think it is important to recognise that criminals already use existing monetary systems quite well, and that fully-public blockchains have an audit trail that investigators could only dream of compared to plain cash.