Hi fellow Hiveians,
Today I wanted to talk about finally making a small purchase using cryptocurrency!
Getting Your Feet Wet
Making my first purchase with a crypto outside of Hive! A little scary but exciting!
I will say the wonders of technology are really incredible. I also find myself extremely lucky and fortunate to have such a vibrant and robust community like Hive to really do extensive learning that I've been able to over the past several years.
I've been on the Hive platform for 6 years now. What the fuck?! It's so long LOL but it feels like a blink of an eye in many ways! With that, there is so many things that I've been exposed to and have learned, it's quite fascinating. One of those things is definitely the impact and use of various digital assets (what many still call cryptocurrency, but that is becoming a bit of an old term in many ways!)
Recently I got the chance to try and make a purchase with cryptocurrency and it was fascinating! I will say, I did break one of my cardinal rules.. and that I didn't do a test transaction! Damn that was a really big pain point for me, not having the ability to do a test.. but it was a purchase that was a fairly small amount of money so I was willing to risk it. It always sucks losing some money, but for this specific scenario, we figured it's not terrible to give it a try.
I'm not going to say what was bought of course, but that it's remarkable to be able to transcend physical boundaries and limitations to make a transaction, and also make that transaction without astronomical fees and other bullshit involved. If we had to make the transaction with something like Western Union, the thieves of the financial world in terms of making purchases for people who don't live in a country like the United States, the fees would have been ridiculous, likely 30 dollars or more. Pretty insane shit.
We were a little hesitant to make the purchase using bitcoin but at the same time, I was a little bit excited to give it a try. I've only really used Hive as a way to use various forms of crypto to make purchases and it always is kept internal to Hive and never to anything in the physical world. Making the transition over to this is quite interesting!
The jury is still out of course if what we bought was a scam, and we lost out on some bitcoin but that's the gamble in a lot of ways. It is also difficult because the validity of the online world is sketchy, knowing how many websites are fake. We took a chance and rolled the dice with this though, so we shall see.
I am not one to be spending things like bitcoin on stupid shit, but at the same time there is also a need to use the stuff as money. If all we do is hold it then it is relatively useless as a form of currency and ends up being no better than gold that people buy and hoard. I'm not going to go out and throw all kinds of money around, but getting my feet wet with small transactions is a really good way to get into the swing of things in terms of actually using the digital assets.
What about you, have you purchased things online with cryptocurrency like bitcoin or others yet? Hive doesn't quite count, but it's still a good thing! Let me know in the comments!
-CmplXty. Real human written content, never AI. All pictures are mine unless otherwise stated
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I also struggle a bit with not being able to tell how sketchy some digital websites are. Sometimes, I try making further research about them, but little is revealed, since using crypto as money in the physical world hasn't been around that much. But it's really great to bridge the gap between the two, it's like a glimpse of what may become common in the near future.
Yeah same it's not easy to tell with some sites. I’m at least using my tools like brave browser, information protection strategies etc to minimize potential issues but only time will tell if it works.
It’s interesting to see it as a glimpse in the future though I hope to use a faster/less expensive coin like litecoin for these things. This one didn’t let me though but I’m sure in the future it will be easier to do that.
"I'm not going to say what was bought, of course --"
why not ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
lol kidding, but you're definitely right that it is very exciting technology! I'll never forget the day I made my first purchase with debit online 😂 and taking the same precautions, "Oh gawd what if I lose my money and can't get it back?!"
I'm absolutely grateful for the advancement of financial technology. If I had to choose between Bitcoin or The Banks™, I'd choose Bitcoin each time.
It's funny that this topic has come up (again) because my husband and I were discussing the benefits and cons to having physical paper money. Because as much as I enjoy all of the convenience, I still believe physical money is the best form of currency. God forbid a service crash happen or the internet is out and you can't access funds -- you are SOL!! 😭
Oh for sure, there is NOTHING that can replace paper money at the end of the day. Granted it also assumes that the money is accepted because we could very well end up in a Zimbabwe situation where there is hyperinflation and it's largely useless but that's a different story. The people in North Carolina relied on paper currency and handshakes to resolve their issues since the American government largely threw them to the fucking garbage heap, the fucks.
Banks vs bitcoin is certainly an interesting situation. On the one hand, banks are secure in that you have a better chance of getting some security through them but it is less responsibility in that you don't know exactly what your money is doing most of the time. I have uses for both of them, although I really dislike major corporate banks. Local banks are the way to go, but I know not everyone has a local bank so that's difficult in itself.
No I haven't ever made a purchase using crytpo but maybe sometime I'll. I believe that's one of the essences of crypto itself to be used in every day purchases just like fiat or even replace fiat. Though I wonder if BTC's high fees won't make it a little difficult to make payments with it.
Thanks for sharing your experience and have a nice weekend.
Yeah it's good to actually use the assets sometimes so we can spend it. It will be a bridge for it for quite a while and eventually replaced.
I remember having this Crypto.com account where I had CRO tokens. Within the app there are many things which one can purchase with CRO tokens. During the pandemic, I remember using CRO token to buy vouchers to offset for my food deliveries. On hindsight it was probably a good thing to do since the value of the token has fallen a lot since that 2021 peak. Hahaha.