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.
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.