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Comment by codexon | Hacker News Reader

I've always tried to state the problems with crypto here every time it comes up, but there is such a huge incentive for the people invested in crypto to pump it, that every year the number of crypto pumpers grows more numerous than people like me.

There really is a place for a decentralized currency to replace paypal, but none of the cryptos live up to it. In fact I just tried using crypto again a few days ago and it was a terrible experience just like it was 10 years ago. My bitcoin transaction took over 30 minutes to verify so I tried changing to ethereum, and the transaction fee there is $8...

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BTW, PayPal is absolutely terrible. That's a very low bar for crypto to clear. SEPA (=normal bank) money transfers or direct debit within Europe, TransferWise, etc. are much better options than PayPal (or crypto) for most purposes.

My email transfers regularly take 30-45 minutes and cost 1.00

My lightning transfers take 1 second and cost less than 1 penny.

How can the cost of the transfer be less than the cost of the energy it is claimed it uses? I could never figure thst out.

A BTC transaction (on chain) brings the miner about $100, but most of that is from the coinbase mining reward, and a small part only from transaction fees (though that proportion will grow, presumably, as coinbase halves to zero). A good chunk of that will be energy costs, so an on-chain transaction will have significant energy costs (and probably way more than the current average fee of $2.65/tx, which, btw, is more than your "email transfer").

Off-chain transactions (like lightning, or from one exchange account to another at the same exchange, or from one account to another at the Salvadorean "wallet") can of course be quick and cheap, like any centralised banking.

You're not going to get cheap transactions using Bitcoin or Ethereum directly.

There are two wallets that are using newer tech to make cheap + fast transactions happen (while still being decentralized + secure):

- Argent - Uses zkSync which is an L2 that compresses transactions and writes them to Ethereum - costs about 25c per transaction right now.

- Dharma - Uses Polygon which is it's own chain that posts a hash of everything that happened to Ethereum at regular intervals - costs < 1c per transaction right now .

Tell me about it.

USDC would make for a suitable candidate but of course, it's got $25 transaction fees on ETH. USDC-SPL maybe. The last time I tried to move some USDC-ETH, it was cheaper and more convenient to just have FTX wire me the money ($0) then wire it from my bank account to the recipient ($0).

In reality though, a CBDC is probably the best way forward.

To be fair neither Bitcoin nor Eth are aimed toward being a day-to-day currency. Regardless of the original intent Bitcoin is only really useful for hoarding like gold, and Eth in its current state is more about smart contracts than transactions.

If you're truly interested in a decentralized currency there are other projects focused on that.

I'd argue that a lot of the value priced into these currencies are based on the assumption that they'd be usable as a day-to-day currency someday.

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