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Comment by matheusmoreira | Hacker News Reader

> Ultimately there has to be an off-ramp

Not if people start using the cryptocurrency to actually pay for stuff. That's the point of money, after all.

Once you start buying goods and services in the real world, then the whole “trustless” part of crypto becomes useless.

How is crypto going to ensure the landscaper actually cuts my grass. I have to have some measure of trust and there has to be infrastructure to resolve disputes and try to make people whole. Once you have that, you are in many ways back at fiat currency.

Which is why central back digital currencies will be / are a thing.

I've also argued that we already have workable digital currency for regular consumer transactions. I pay my landscaper with Zelle. Who cares that it's denominated in dollars? Point is I can already move money practically wherever I want with the click of a button. And that money is already accepted by everyone I transact with.

Crypto is a solution looking for a problem. And money laundering/crime ended up being the problem they ended up solving. I'm enjoying watching this space slowly grind down / burn to the ground. Good riddance to a level of evil where the perps joke about the fact they're making money helping criminals "they're here for the crime" etc. 18 months is too little time in prison.

Zelle is among the worst, yuck

That maybe, but my bank offers it and so I've used it because it was there, and I have had no problems with it. Which is all I need. It worked without a seconds thought

That's more than crypto offers me.

> How is crypto going to ensure the landscaper actually cuts my grass.

Same way cash ensured that. People generally don't pay until the service is done.

It’s been 15 years and nobody still uses cryptocurrency to pay for stuff. And as you say, that’s the point of money.

So maybe, just maybe crypto is actually not very good as money, which is why people have been increasingly desperate to invent new stories to keep someone paying real money for crypto (digital gold, NFTs, etc.)

I paid for something with crypto just two days ago. I don't do many transactions with crypto, because most of the time it's easier to just use my cards, but on occasion it's handy.

Frankly, it works well, but it's not user-friendly for non-technical users still.

So basically unless the existing financial system gets really broken, it’s not worth using?

It's been worth using for me when I've used it, just not very often.

I would contend that being friendly for non-technical users is a necessary condition to consider it working well. It clearly works, nobody is saying it doesn't.

Plenty of things works well only for people with niche knowledge.

And plenty of people take a far more negative view of crypto.

‘Niche money for nerds’ doesn’t sound like a world changing concept.

I'm writing this post over a VPN subscription I bought using BTC, paid from my wallet. It was as painless as putting in credit card details.

You are not addressing the point. There's a wold of difference between usable for something, and it being a good use case. You can go shopping in a monster truck, but that doesn't mean it's a good general use case for monster trucks in society.

Why is it a bad use case? It was literally as convenient as any credit/debit card transaction.

Because when it comes to fraud, myself and the average person tend to have a lot of protection against fraudulent actors.

“caveat emptor” is a very poor society wide model.

I've gotten paid for services via Monero. It works surprisingly well. Just start using it.

And what did you do with that Monero after you received it?

Tried to find stuff to buy with it. Didn't find anything, sadly. I want people to start using it because then I can pay them with crypto too.

Most people don't use cryptocurrency to pay for stuff, but back when I lived in Cambridge there was a nice pub where you could buy your pizza with it, and last week here in Berlin I passed a Subway[0] that let you pay for your sandwich in BTC. Or at least it said it did, BTC by itself is a terrible idea[1].

[0] And a subway. Except the subway was elevated and the "proper" railway was submerged (but not covered): https://www.google.com/maps/search/S%2BU+Schönhauser+Allee+(...

[1] And to shortcut the conversation: Alice: *something about payment layers*, Bob: *how payment layers destroy the one thing BTC actually does provide*

You can have cryptocurrency or you can have wildly manipulated assets in an attempt to become rich at the expense of everyone else who didn’t get in first. It’s a stampede toward number two by literally everyone I’ve encounter over the past decade who plays crypto markets.

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