You need both your vendors and your customers to be able to easily transfer money in and out, and as things stand, that's an absolutely massive pain in the ass compared to using USD, and approximately nobody does it. But that is only the start of the problems, not factoring in things like wild exchange value swings, and huge gas/processing fees.
- possible the transaction won't happen immediately or happen at all
- extremely expensive
- stupid (if you expect your particular cryptocurrency to increase in value over time)
- missing all the protections and benefits of a credit card
Either way, it completely defeats the purpose of decentralization, consensus, etc. Coinbase, in that case, is exactly like a traditional bank except that you're trading non-money instead of money.
I just noticed I read that wrong. I missed the same provider as your vendor part.
So I guess the solution for using cryptocurrency to buy things at Amazon is “if you already bought cryptocurrency at Amazon…”.
But I’m trying to buy something. So how does the intermediatory step help at all?
This post may sound somewhat hostile. I TRUELY don’t understand how cryptocurrency helps any of this. It only seems to help cryptocurrency people.
The author nailed my feelings 100%.
Sell physical assets for crypto, then cash out at a Crypto ATM in your currency of choice, if you absolutely need to. A big part of the problem is Crypto ATMs aren't prolific enough. Restrictions on money-handling businesses come into play there, which is argued as anti-terrorism/organized crime measures but is really just gatekeeping/rent-seeking by the established players.