How viable is crypto as a private medium exchange in the modern world?
I see the value of using cryptocurrencies as a form of digital cash (from both a personal privacy point of view and a broader political/economic point of view) but am also put off by a) all the scamming and speculation and moreover b) the friction and privacy tradeoffs involved in getting any of it.
One of the obvious problems is that not many sellers accept it as payment. I can accept that. But AFAICT, in order to pay those that do, I must either do the legwork of conducting a peer-to-peer exchange of fiat currency for crypto (PITA) or use an exchange, which will have records of my personal identity. I’m aware that I could launder exchange-bought crypto to obfuscate my ownership of it but that is also a PITA. I suppose I could also mine coins but that has the most friction of all options and is a poor use of electricity production in my view.
Is there a solution that I’m not aware of, where I can buy (or indeed sell) crypto easily and privately?
I bought crypto and still own it, but over time I have come to the opinion that until stores and malls accept crypto, they will never grow betond being a commodity like gold. This is the highest price I’ve ever seen gold. That has me concerned of how volatile people’s finances are. The cost of living was a huge amount cheaper when gold was 65 to 70% cheaper than now.
If bitcoin ever hits $400,000, I see implosion and collapse being imminent. Crypto will never be worthlesss, at least crypto that casual observers have heard of before, but there’s no huge profit to be made from it without engaging in financial criminal activity.
So if you want to get into crypto, do definitely protect your identity at all cost before purchasing whichever currency, but also know for what principal you got it to it. If it is to get wealthy, you wasted your money. If it’s to hold on to something of value that you can trade for if economy falls off, then that could prove to be a wise decision in the future.
There’s more I could say, this might already be blah blah blah, but I hope that you understand my overall premise. I genuinelly don’t now why individual stores don’t accept crypto and then sell it almost in real time. If crypto stablized, a few people would take their pay in crypto instead of bank deposit, and just that would take money away from the elite global class if staff got paid in crypto to do their shopping.
I don’t think they need to either. In the physical world, cash is the absolute best. Using crypto in the real world is like using cash by mail - cool gimmick but very impractical. Crypto is a way to buy your VPS, domain, email, etc - the purely virtual things.
My point being, as long as there is never any way to buy groceries with crypto, it will never be greatly valuable. It won’t be worthess, people will want it, but crypto will never grow into anything.
Because if that, not as many online services will every accept crypto because they don’t want to pay to exchange it. But if crypto became another form of payment for retail, then a lot more online stores and services will also accept crypto instead of being responsible for taking card information.
I have been buying my groceries with Monero since January of 2023. And I’m still alive, so it must work. Otherwise I’d be long dead of starvation.
Edit: I have found that the absolute most difficult things to pay are the things that require a direct ACH transfer such as your car payment, credit card bill, or mortgage. If anything at all accepts a debit card, it can be paid for with crypto.
You can walk to grocery store and pay with monero? I can’t find a way to buy monero without a credit card.