It’s not untraceable, but it’s way more anonymous for routine purchases than CC. Also with all the nonsense the CC companies are pulling lately, it’s a nice example of why de-centralized, unbanked fiat has real value. Personally I use it for search engine subscriptions and paying VPN fees with at least a layer of “hey, you can’t sell my demographic data or send me junk mail” privacy. Also if you want to send money to someone without using venmo type garbage, it’s super easy and flexible even if you don’t have the same type of crypto as the person you are sending to. It’s huge for sending money internationally as there are big fees associated with international money brokers when involving traditional fiat.
The mantra of crypto as a scam is wrong. It’s just seriously overvalued and has been turned into scam as an investment commodity. The technology itself, at least modern scalable versions that don’t require AI level nuclear power plants to scale, is not flawed. The fact that the archiac unscalable bitcoin prototype is still the most valued is a great example of the mismatch between real world value and the fucked up crypto marketplace.
Comment on SEC says it will deregulate cryptocurrencies with 'Project Crypto'
Kronusdark@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Genuine question, is crypto good for anything other than gambling at the moment? I don’t ever hear of anyone buying anything with crypto, only exchanging it out for USD. NFTs are basically a punchline now… what is it actually good for?
Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
cadekat@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
The fact that scams persist on blockchain is an unfortunate side effect of the whole uncensorable thing…
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Monero absolutely is untraceable
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
So. Which one would you advise? To use for the purposes described.
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I’d use ethereum with a USDC token for anything that didn’t need to be ethereum specifically. Then you’re not subject to the volatility of the crypto itself, but still gain the ability to pay for things or transfer money globally.
wampus@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
It’s a really good way to bribe politicians and public figures.
Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It’s traceable and immutable. It’s a bad way to do anything illegal.
explodicle@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
That’s just layer zero on some blockchains.
muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Maybe if you want to buy something visa, Mastercard, and Christian nut jobs don’t want you to have. Otherwise it’s a total scam.
Mirshe@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Assuming you can find a buyer who will process that crypto, without touching either of those payment processors. All the crypto evangelists seem to forget the major crypto payment platforms are in use because you can actually rapidly exchange your crypto for that thing you can actually pay your rent with - but those function largely on the backbone of big payment platforms to trade that crypto into cash for the merchant.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
I could be wrong, but I believe most exchanges use ACH to directly deposit a person’s profits into their bank account.
I’m no expert, but I believe ACH is separate from your Visas and MasterCards
ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
If things go as they do, then it’ll be your only option soon to pay for porn.
tonytins@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
It was supposed to be the very thing that Paypal become (probably Elon hedged his bet on it after getting kicked) but it became so inefficient with expensive transaction fees that everyone turned it down. (Mind you, this was before we even before we knew environmental damage.) As a consequence, it became turned became a worse version of the stock market.
iopq@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It’s easy to transfer to other countries. Ever tried to send $20 to another country like Kazakhstan? It’s a nightmare
utopiah@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
easy to transfer to other countries
Also easy to transfer with IBAN and relatively cheap … so I guess other countries that do not rely on IBAN?
iopq@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It’s easy if you want to pay $50 for a wire for your $10 transfer
deafboy@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I used to buy a lot of pizza and burgers with bitcoin when I did night shifts. Still use it to buy electronics at least once a month.
It’s also the best way to donate to nonprofit projects. I can just send ~ $10 of value, one time. No need to risk accidentally signing up for a monthly subscription or being bombarded by spam.
If you don’t keep 100% of your monthly budget in BTC, you don’t really care about the volatility either, because long term it always goes up.
breecher@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
None of your examples are examples of what it is good for, since they can all be done by other means.
iopq@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Just because you can do something in another way doesn’t make every other way bad
REDACTED@infosec.pub 3 weeks ago
Yes. Can you imagine my surprise when my drug money suddenly became mainstream? You could also buy weapons and order a murder online.
ScoffingLizard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Where tf do you order an assassin online? It’s an FBI agent on the other end for sure.
deafboy@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Not really. Just a bunch of volunteers trying to get the police all over the world to do their job.
axum@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Sui specifically is a unique horse in this race, as they are trying to really push for zero knowledge/trust models as well as what is known in cryptography spaces as multi party computation.
What this all effectively means long term is several things
- moving between one cryptocurrency on one chain to another can be done without trusting a 3rd party 'bridge’
- you still retain control of your assets on cryptocurrency exchanges utilizing the tech instead of trusting some 3rd party like Coinbase or Charles Schwab to fulfill their end of the bargain
- with the raise of the bs porn ID laws, this tech coupled with NFTs could generate you a proof token that has your personal info hidden after verifying with some trusted company handing these token out and being able to use them at sites to prove you are an adult without revealing your name.
The problem with all of this of course is it is very new tech, and it’s hard to break into a space that’s littered with scammers running pyramid schemes or just pulling the rug out from under people and running with the money.
The tech is there to eliminate a lot of unnecessary middle men in the financial world, but like all shiny new things, it is still lacking mass adoption and formal govt rules around it.
AngryRobot@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Didn’t Newegg have some kind of crypto payment option? Do they still have it?
O_i@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I funded my entire gaming pc with bitcoin, I believe they still accept it
oppy1984@lemdro.id 3 weeks ago
Crypto (ETH and the like) is useful for it’s protocol, you can build projects on it.
Bitcoin is a good store of value, and with lightning payments starting to be accepted it could be a good way to pay for goods and services. The third world is currently using lightning to circumvent inflationary currency swings.
ryannathans@aussie.zone 3 weeks ago
Bitcoin has become a reserve currency like gold, without the heavy weight
Lumisal@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Currency has stable and usable value.
Bitcoin has neither of those.
iopq@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
You mean the value that crashed like 30% over two years? At least bitcoin went back up
Lumisal@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It rebounding and crashing by hundreds in value like a meth head on caffeinated cocaine laced with LSD is what doesn’t make it a currency.
No one wants a shit currency where one day a donut costs 1000 and the next 2000 and on the weekend it’s either 599 or 3999.
That’s why it’s at best a speculative asset, except it’s dumber than that because it’s intangible. It’s like the long term stupidity of fiat mixed with insane instability, all while using way more resources.
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Honestly this is bullshit. In 1880s China they’d sometimes use thousand years old coins to pay for stuff. Coins of fucking non-standard weight and value! With symbols of sometimes dead writing systems (like Tangut). And still that was currency.
BTW, I once had an idea of a truly decentralized electronic currency without proof of work and all such, with plenty of emitters, signed transactions and coins of different emitters and parties or partitions having different value, determined via market mechanisms. Like automatic haggling on every transaction, a bit the way MMORPG markets have it, except, eh, they still have some fixed currency, and here it would all be relative.
For all the inconveniences it would have two very good traits - no blockchain and no power effect (like the majority of the network deciding something or premined coins). But this isn’t important because GNU Taler people have made basically a similar, but far better, system than what I imagined, and theirs actually exists.
Lumisal@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
1 Bitcoin used to be with less than a dollar.
Now it’s thousands of dollars.
It’s also lost thousands of dollars in value.
It hasn’t even been 2 decades.
There’s never been ANYTHING that volatile and unstable aside from maybe fucking tulips.
NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
It was great to trade and move value around. You could send to other countries, or do work for it. But Bitcoin fucked it all by basically being a ponzi scheme. People below will talk about it and how it holds or increases in value. Thats because most people are still buying in and hording it. Making it terrible as a currency.
I never bought crypto, I only traded, bartered, worked for it. I never put it on an exchange or used another company. Another sink of value and a stupid place to keep it. But that is the vast majority of people now.
So it is not good for anything anymore.
icylobster@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Bitcoin specifically was never meant as a currency. There is a reason why people call it “digital gold”. I do find myself hesitant to buy it since people buy it with the goal of getting rich, it ruins the entire point.
In theory I actually love the idea of Bitcoin, something independent of resources. I know that sounds weird, but the moment asteroid mining gets big, traditional money storage will get rocked, hard. While something like Bitcoin, in theory, would be safe.
I see deregulation as generally a bad thing if you want any of this to be taken seriously and not be manipulated. At least, for most of them. In theory you could have a crypto that is very resilient to manipulation, I just don’t know if that exists right now.
NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Bitcoin specifically was never meant as a currency.
Sure it was, look at the name of Satoshi’s paper: Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System
explodicle@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Um ackchually by electronic cash they mean like bearer bonds, irreversible but not necessarily usable at all.
Reverendender@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
I’m going to go ahead and not worry about asteroid mining
fodor@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Yes. There are a few legitimate non gambling non crime uses. But those are typically very minor transactions. The problem is that it is somewhat anonymous and not refundable. It turns out that we really do want those features for almost all medium-high price purchases. Otherwise the thieves and scam artists will jack our shit.
O_i@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Bitcoin is the only cryptocurrency worth owning really. All the pump and dumps/rugpulls you hear about are about “shitcoins”.
Plus word is Square and PayPal will start to implement bitcoin payments to their services very soon
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Monero is good for completely private and secure transactions. People often use it to buy drugs online… From what I’ve heard.
icylobster@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Don’t a lot of platforms online not let you buy Monero because of this? Like how do people buy Monero through a reputable source?
Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Buy a reputable cryptocurrency then swap that for whatever you want.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Godex.io
pineapplelover@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
You can anonymously buy things on the dark web with monero. I’ve been looking to buy gift cards so I can purchase things anonymously. I believe you can even pay for Mullvad with monero
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
I believe you can even pay for Mullvad with monero
You can
pineapplelover@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Yep and you get a 10% discount too if you pay with monero
Euphoma@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
Its good for evading the law.
queermunist@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
It’s a good way to launder money. The used to need to sell coke to fund off-the-books CIA operations, now they can just give them shitcoins.