About 3 or 4 years ago PayPal added the option to buy cryptocurrency, which I thought I’d try. (Dumb idea 🙄)
Part of the sign up process was glitched. I retried and clicked submit one too many times, I guess. Now I’ve been unable to use PayPal for years. They blocked me because THEIR SITE was broken, but the web page essentially accuses me of being a criminal and asks for my bank records. No way in hell.
This was just for me to pay others. I can only imagine how awful PayPal is if you are a vendor.
Fuck PayPal.
Well now you know two people who use crypto and I use it as money. I don’t speculate on it. I buy my groceries and pay my cell phone bill and pay my insurance with it. I recently bought a Taylor Swift album with it as well.
I don’t think I could buy my groceries with crypto if I wanted to. What supermarket takes crypto? My phone provider wouldn’t either and my insurance is deducted directly from my paycheque because that’s just how it works here.
Instacart has giftcards you can buy with crypto and so does my cell provider. Sure, you absolutely could say that they don’t accept it directly, and you would be right. However, I still get my groceries in my refrigerator, and I still get service on my cell phone. So, at the end of the day, does it matter?
It’s an extra step. Two extra steps actually. I can go to the store and pay or I can exchange official currency to crypto and then exchange it again to giftcards. It’s good that the possibility exists, since it’s de facto untraceable but it’s inconvenient, slower and frankly unnecessary for most people.
And how often do you end up paying more on real money due to the delay in transactions or awful gas fees for your transaction?
Crypto being a common currency is about as likely as Gary Johnson winning the presidential election. The average person is going to take up crypto as much as they use Tor. Both have their uses, but neither one will ever be mainstream.
I think that’s the fundamental disconnect. You may not see it as money, where I do, since I can buy the things I need to survive with it. And I can buy the things that I enjoy with it, which makes it money. Fees have never been a real problem. I mean, 1 US cent for a transaction is nothing
Edit: You and I would be unable to make a trade because we cannot agree on what is valuable. I do not value fiat currencies and you do not value crypto.
You may not see it as money, where I do, since I can buy the things I need to survive with it.
Can you go to a random store and buy food or goods? Can you send it to your landlord for rent? No, only a small sunset of orgs take it, because everyone else understands that shit like transaction delays and inconsistent gas fees means it’s impossible to effectively run a business on monopoly money that doesn’t have a set worth.
You can consider it to have monetary value, and I do insofar as you’re playing with an unregulated security that should be taxed, but it’s not money in that you can buy an arbitrary good for sale. You’re playing with monopoly bills that someone will agree to pretend is real money, but most businesses will laugh you out of the building and tell you to come back with real money. Because crypto is just a financial asset that people give monetary worth, but it isn’t money.
