Comment by Cloudef | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Cloudef | Hacker News Reader

I got recently granted airdrops for few cryptos due to past contributions to some open source projects (no idea which). It reminded me why cryptocoins won't ever take off.

   1. The time to transfer from coin to coin took ages
   2. To finish the transfer I would've paid fee (gas) on the target wallet (eth), and the price is ridiculous (around $20)
   3. Presumably I would've had to do this again if I wanted to transfer to exchange
   4. The UX in general is still bad and you have to become cryptocoin expert to actually do basic things

I don't deny that for some countries and especially long travel transfers cryptocoins might be the only valid option, but I do not ever see them becoming a currency for daily trade. As for the price? Speculation, money laundering and well I guess collectively lots of people are basically in the game already and don't want out / can't get out. As long as there is money in the game anything can thrive, even if it makes little sense or is technically dumb.

For your particular case, you're referring to some of the slower blockchians. There are much faster and essentially free blockchains (like Base or Solana) which solve 1-3 on your list. UX still an issue.

They do not really solve the issue because I still need to at some point transfer/convert to the "big guys coin" to actually get the funds to a exchange.

Ethereum and Bitcoin are really the only coins that suffer from congestion from time to time leading to high transaction costs. This is more apparent on Eth where contract interactions can lead to those high +$20 transaction costs, thats when it might be worth it to wait for when the congestion has cleared.

If you can avoid ethereum's main layer altogether it becomes much cheaper transact, most exchanges support the various l2 layers that have been popping up recently.

I do agree that it takes way too much time and effort for anyone not familiar to the crypto scene to figure out all the different chains, their compatibility, bridges, swaps etc. to make cost efficient transactions.

You can withdraw funds out of Base using Coinbase. Takes a few seconds, it is a legit entity approved by the US govt with all the KYC/AML regulations, and is going to cost very less in a few weeks after the Dencun upgrade.

Japan regulates so you can only use few exhanges and withdraw select of cryptocoins

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