What can you actually do with cryptocurrencies?

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newby_investor

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So I'm under the impression that there are some true believers in cryptocurrencies on this forum.

I'm not dead set against them, I've just never found a way that they can be useful. There are also certain criticisms, such as the Bitcoin blockchain having carbon emissions comparable to some small countries...

I'm not particularly interested in trading. To me that's not useful. I'm not interested in long-term "investing" either, because a cryptocurrency isn't adding value to anything. I don't hold any gold in my portfolio, for the same reason.

Can you actually use cryptocurrency for anything in South Africa other than shifty Ponzi schemes? Are there places that I can buy stuff using cryptocurrencies? And would there be any advantage to doing so over just using good old-fashioned rands?

Could I as a small business owner (legally) accept cryptocurrency payments? What kind of advantages would that give me, other than now having some crypto to spend somewhere?
 
newby_investor said:
Could I as a small business owner (legally) accept cryptocurrency payments? What kind of advantages would that give me, other than now having some crypto to spend somewhere?
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Yes, benefit being the value is not tied to a fiat currency.

For a business, the hassle of navigating the exchange to rands could be cumbersome, and should generally be avoided for business transactions - unless you really know what you are doing.
 
A few payment gateways and websites accept crypto. But I guess that kinda makes more sense if you're trading crypto and want a place to spend it. For most people it makes no sense to use crypto to pay for services where a credit card etc. is accepted. Kinda made sense on darknet markets, but for most day to day stuff it's still pretty much useless.
 
Technically one major benefit under major adoption would be no inflation, since you can’t just print more.
 
Crypto is the "way of the world"
Payment systems will be replaced with Crypto alternatives soon.
So, in short get your understanding of it now before it consumes the entire financial system
 
Its a store of value that is yours. Almost everything other thing can be easily taken away from you. Gold, diamonds, money, property. In almost all cases an authority can take that away from you at any time. Its also really hard to "move" that value between different geographic points.

BTC is yours, if you memorize your key or keep it hidden safely away, no one can touch that btc. No government in the world can confiscate that from you unless you give them the power to do so.

To me its a very unique type of asset, that has properties no other asset has. Its the closest thing humans have to true triple entry accounting.

I also accept any payments in crypto currency :D
 
Tim_vb said:
Legal or illegal use cases? Leaving liberation and "self sovereign" arguments aside.
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I mean practical use cases. Like I can't go to PnP and buy my groceries with Bitcoin, I can't pay my home-loan in Ether, so what can I actually do with it?
 
eg2505 said:
Ive brought accounts with Crypto before, and isn't there a debit card one can use thats funded by crypto,
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I've seen the card - ice3 or something? But how it works internally is you have to load rands from your crypto onto the card before you can actually spend stuff. Which is a step, I guess.
 
I'm pretty sceptical about it as a payment mechanism. My cryptocurrency analogy is a single ledger on a single bank - super fast and easy to use with very low fees IFF all participants only transact on said ledger - the moment you need to pay someone at another ledger/currency you are back at banking 1.0. Banking experiences suck because we all bank at different banks with different ledgers.
 
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