Hacker News Reader

Comment by unleaded | Hacker News Reader

real question because i don't know, what do people actually buy with crypto other than other money or illegal stuff? i presume paypal won't be happy with you buying/selling drugs with it

View on HN

There are legit uses that enterprise companies are using today, but they are few and far between in comparison to day trading/speculation/etc. For example, moving money from different currencies usually requires foreign exchange fees which can be hefty - whereas if you buy some stablecoin in a local currency and then sell that stablecoin in the currency you want to have in your bank account, you pay tiny transaction costs and thats it. This is a real problem for companies who have operations in tons of countries, and have to manage bank accounts and local entities in all of those countries. Imagine reducing your profit by 1-2% just because you want your profits in ireland instead of mexico. Stablecoins make that into <0.5%, which is many millions.

https://a16zcrypto.com/posts/article/stripe-bridge-acquisiti... has some examples

To answer your question, I hardly buy anything with crypto because there's barely support... Hopefully this is a catalyst for change.

I feel like this is the wrong question to ask. Instead try "why would someone purchase with crypto over fiat?". I prefer to use crypto for international online purchases because the transaction and conversion fees from my native currency are way too high. With crypto it's a one off deposit fee and then gas is trivial these days.

It’s strange because I buy everything with Bitcoin already. Literally. Even my kids Robux!

I have a virtual crypto card and gave it to my daughter and she added it to the Google wallet on her android. She uses it anywhere to buy anything. My bank didn't want to open bank account to minor. Everything was set up in 10 minutes. I transfer to her some random coins and it just works.

I also use it myself as a backup abroad when my regular bank foreign account doesn't work for any reason.

I got the card in the middle of the night in 10 minutes.

I think all that is simply awesome.

Your bank does not offer custodial or joint accounts?

I don't want custodial or joint accounts. Then my kids call me to ask about stuff on their accounts. I want them to have their own thing. I want total separation of my own accounts from anything else in the world, including my family.

These of accounts do have read access so you can send all your childrens' phone calls straight to voicemail. :)

Also, you can have complete separation if your accounts are at Bank A, and the dependents are at Bank B.

I'm not trying to convince you, but moreso keep others from making parenting harder than it already is.

You are making it waaay harder than it is :)

I got this in 10 minutes and have 0 maintenance, and you want me to have account at bank A and B which can take days, if not weeks, along with the constant management. I have a life, you know.

Nah, I am gonna keep using a crypto card while my neighbor still waits for a card of the local bank 3 months later, after a tone of back&forth.

None of what you said is true in the US.

Used everywhere to buy everything? Some serious evidence is required to support this claim. I bet she can't even buy candy at your neighbourhood convenience store.

Dude...

I can buy anything anywhere. If it supports regular cards, it supports crypto card.

My first test was to buy candy btw in the local corner shop in the middle of nowhere.

It is really funny how people on HN can be so stubborn.

Is it a Visa or Mastercard then?

https://www.bybit.com/en/cards

You are welcome.

So it is indeed a Mastercard, plus some extra fees:

  What are the fees associated with using the Bybit Card?

  Here's a breakdown of the fees:

  – Foreign Exchange Fee: 1% (on top of Mastercard's exchange rate)

  – Crypto Conversion Fee: 0.9% (on top of Spot trading fees)

  – Annual Fee: None

  – Dormancy/Inactivity Fee: None

  – Card Cancellation Fee: None

  – Card Issuance/Replacement Fee: None for Bybit Virtual Card; 5 USD/USDT for Bybit Physical Card

  – ATM Withdrawal Fee: 2% (applies after reaching the monthly free ATM withdrawal limit of 100 USD)

The fees are more than acceptable for the service.

Wirex is quite nice, though the FX fees are also a bit steep. But at least you get $200/mo ATM withdrawals for free!

https://wirexapp.com/help/article/wirex-fees-1379

https://wirexapp.com/card, or affiliate link: https://ale.sh/r/wirex

Venmo and Coinbase also offer debit cards (Venmo -> Mastercard, Coinbase -> Visa) that work for this purpose. Like OP says it's trivial to get (just open the app, enable the Debit Card feature, read the disclosures (pretty standard stuff but do read them), then add to Google Wallet.)

Fwiw you won't find a supermarket in this country that accepts buying things on credit, much less a local candy store. If that worked for you, it's very specific to wherever you live

I used it in Serbia, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Greece, Montenegro, Austria... not sure what kind of country you're talking about :)

Huh, okay, I didn't know buying things constantly on credit was common in Europe. Certainly not around Netherlands/Germany (so Austria seems odd, they generally share a culture). The only one of these countries I've been to is Italy but I was young enough that it was probably all cash then

It's a debit card.

Not sure what you mean. Nobody buys anything with cache anymore. I keep some cache in my car for bazaar and similar stuff, but all but few stores accept cards everywhere in EU I go. The convenience of having all your cards on a phone is unparalleled.

Ooh! Somehow I thought you meant credit card. No, indeed, normal cards are normal cards. Misunderstanding is entirely on my side

I think there's some confusion here, you can use a credit card and have it processed on the back-end as a debit transaction, for a consumer the distinction is almost unnoticed.

This differs greatly according to global region. Germany from what I've observed is an outlying for noticing the distinction (mostly because they suffered from very high credit card surcharges for decades vs the rest of the world).

Side note, but you can say you have a debit card, then pay with a credit card and usually it will go through. Or vise versa. No idea why they make the distinction, maybe the fees are different but the cashier usually can’t tell.

How do you get a virtual crypto card?

Cross border money transfer is one reason. People in 3rd world countries don't want to hold their money in the country. Many want to get paid by stablecoins.

I agree the AML laws of old are out of date for the current state of things. More and more workers in developing countries are doing remote work, and AML is unfortunately unfairly affecting this demographic (I used to be part of that demographic).

But enabling everyone to skirt around it completely is not a good outcome IMO.

Increased privacy and independence from a government will always benefit both good and bad actors unfortunately.

They aren't old. They were passed this century—because, in democratic countries, they were politically radioactive until the 9/11 attacks allowed the Intelligence Community to get its wishlist passed into law.

Enabling everyone to skirt around it completely would be in effect a return to the state of affairs that prevailed throughout the entire 20th century, and that would probably be a good tradeoff.

Back when I carried it I would pay all my bills in it. Paid for most of my wedding tbh.

That said, I think Australia might be uniquely blessed by Livingroomofsatoshi. It basically bridges crypto to all our other payment streams.

Oh and grey market stuff all the time. Drugs that arent like, go to jail illegal but ship internationally direct from india. That sort of stuff.

>Drugs that arent like, go to jail illegal but ship internationally direct

I was so angry when Vision Direct lost the ability to ship prescripting contact lenses to US customers — my prescription hasn't changed in two decades! The only crime being committed here is the cost of my annual examination.

A long time ago someone bought a pizza.

Most large company entries into the crypto space seem to fizzle out and disappear due to lack of use, and how annoying it is to deal with currencies which fluctuate in value between the time you've spent them and the time the transaction is approved (I understand there are lightning networks), and then there's the issue with maintaining wallets.

It really just adds nothing but extra complexity to the existing electronic payment methods. And takes away tons of things like regulators, regulations, consumer protections, strong case law.

Given that I basically never use PayPal anymore I'm thinking this might be a desperate attempt to find any new market to grow in.

There's plenty of alternatives these days so now I just use the direct credit card option on most sites.

Yea Paypal seems to have the _most_ friction in my experience. That being said, they bought Venmo in 2013 so I'm still using 'em.

Although, they're pretty late to the game. Company must not be integrated super tightly since Venmo's had some crypto support for years now.

https://www.bitrefill.com/

video games with https://www.kinguin.net/

there's lots of places to spend crypto if you look, and I don't feel like needing to associate my identity just to purchase digital goods. Crypto facilitates that. People forget it's even an option.

The only use-case I've heard for cryptocurrencies that doesn't just sound like a get-rich-quick-speculative-betting-scam is providing financial services to the un-banked.

Russians abroad use crypto to work around sanctions.

I know quite some Russian companies using bitcoins t to trade with western companies. For example large ad networks and bookies that operate there and pay in bitcoins. Malta, Switzerland are quite popular for these constructions.

Isn’t that illegal, I mean what those Western companies are doing?

So that does not answer the question what legit stuff businesses do.

Probably not. Most Russian companies are not subject to sanctions even in the US, but many of their banks are. And most Western companies are not in the US and consequently aren't bound by US sanctions.

However, AFAIK eight of Russia's biggest banks are still cut off from SWIFT: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWIFT_ban_against_Russian_ba...

Coinbase and Venmo offer debit cards that you can fund with crypto. Coinbase offers to auto-sell crypto assets you choose to fund it. That means you can hold money in crypto and sell it off when you want to buy something. Be cognizant of taxes, but if you're willing to hold your crypto for a year then LTCG kicks in and you're getting taxed at pretty reasonable rates.

Investment accounts on the other hand take a while for sales to settle before your funds are available as cash.

Stablecoin payments are currently a hugely growing business, mainly for B2B payments as I understand it. I think its really hard for people who have absorbed 10 years of anti-crypto groupthink from HN to digest the fact that crypto is here to stay and is finding legitimate use cases.

Stablecoin payments really are just better: - Instant settlement - Extremely cheap - Extremely reliable - Highly programmable - Built on open protocols - International

There are no traditional banking systems that offer all of these properties!

If anyone is tempted to reply with "okay but that could have been done with a database" I would really encourage that person to try to think hard about why that didn't happen.

I once had to go through a SWIFT certification and it was a nightmare… They make you jump through so many rings… They make you buy hardware from them (for their certification runs), their documentation is awful. Their test environment is awful (no logs, no clear error messages, etc). Sadest time of my life.

Yeah, its amazing how much anti-crypto HN is. I decided to invest entire year in learning technology and I couldn't be happier on that decision. The entire ecosystem of mainstream coins is mind-blowing and too big to fail at this point.

Funny thing is, most Coinbase or Kraken or Binance transactions of BTC and Ethereum are simple SQL transactions in a normal database.

An immutable ledger to put information is the best invention since sliced bread, and that can only be achieved by an underlying economic system to maintain such a ledger.

That being said, probably all crypto (except one) will go to zero very soon. Crypto is a bubble, but it doesn't mean that the underlying technology is useless.

I bought a Go board and some stones from GoGameGuru back in the day. A bitcoin was only 200-ish Euros back then. Funny to think how much that's gone up.

Those stones cost you a couple hundred thousand or something

My golf instructor accepts bitcoin and provides a 50% discount for doing so!

Are they overseas or something? Why are they willing to offer such a large discount?

Nope, in person in my city. Afraid I don't actually know why he does, but it was pretty easy for me to buy a years worth of lessons for 50% off.

Gray market stuff.

Tax evasion mostly. Tokens are used to obscure movement of assets from both governments, but then you need to safely exit into real money in the recipient country, and preferably make them all clean and legal. Now you need to use some P2P exchanges, rely on some less reputable intermediaries, while PayPal will streamline the process.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com