Ask HN: What have you bought or sold using a cryptocurrency?

[countermeasure]

I'm hoping to get some real-world examples of how people use cryptocurrencies to buy and sell stuff.

That's because over time I've heard much more about people buying cryptocurrencies speculatively than I have about people using them as, well, currencies.

Would anyone be willing to share some information about one or more times you've bought or sold something with a cryptocurrency?

Please include as many of these points as you're comfortable mentioning:

1) Were you buying or selling?

2) What were you buying or selling?

3) What was the cryptocurrency?

4) How much was the transaction for (converted to a fiat currency like the equivalent USD at the time of the transaction, please!)?

5) In which year did the transaction occur?

6) Which platform did you organise the transaction using (Craigslist, a darknet marketplace, face-to-face, etc)?

7) Did the transaction go smoothly, or were there hiccups?

8) Would you buy or sell using a cryptocurrency again?

9) Any other observations, comments or thoughts?

[nocobot]

1) selling

2) my work as a contractor

3) usdc

4) ~11k usdc

5) 2021

6) via email i guess

7) went smoothly, I sent a regular invoice and withdrew via a centralized exchange. Fees for me were lower than receiving an international bank transfer

8) yes

9) the UX is quite bad still, I don’t want to evaporate my salary by mistyping an address. paying ppl in crypto also leads to some pay transparency, I could see how much everyone was making

[ggm]

Bought BTC $200 worth end 2017 sold for $600 end 2018 got a 2nd hand pixel 1 off the profits.

It's gambling. No trade I did across the window felt any different to pulling a 1 armed bandit lever. All the trend and trade analysis I thought I was doing was pure guesswork, prices were being set and met by other people and I was subject to the effect of fees on small holdings, far more than actual market moves aside from the gross 3x increase across the period.

I did it as a learning exercise. Obviously if I'd followed my sons suggestion and bought $1000 in the early 2000s (neither of us bought, I dissuaded him) I might feel different but I do think overall it's just gambling, looking for another dupe to cash out on.

[ephemeralname]

1) Buying

2) Modafinil

3) BTC

4) ~$100 USD

5) 2023

6) Clearnet site

7) Smoothly

8) Yes

9) There are compelling uses of cryptocurrency, they're just mostly limited to things that you wouldn't want to talk about publicly. And so of course you'd be unlikely to hear about them. If I wanted to buy/sell hard drugs on the internet in large quantities, I'd probably want to do it over a DNM with XMR, and I would try to draw as little attention to myself as possible. I certainly wouldn't want to talk about my experience on HN.

[archontes]

1) Buying

2) Russian language Magic: The Gathering Cards

3) Bitcoin

4) $100

5) 2014

6) Coinbase, iirc. Maybe some Russian bitcoin to ruble website intermediate.

7) Laggy and so I did the transaction twice and wound up with $100 leftover of 2014 bitcoin that I forgot about then sold in 2021.

8) I wouldn't hold crypto for any significant amount of time, but I would use it if it made sense, say, to move money in or out of a country with financial regulations I don't care about, like Sri Lanka.

9) Any crypto that gains widespread adoption will inevitably meet its doom as a result of that very adoption, and the plain reason is that at the end of the year, income in the form of that crypto will need taxes to be paid on it, which will necessitate selling off of that asset for whatever currency the taxes are paid in. For this reason, demand for fiat currency will always exceed demand for crypto.

Crypto with a conserved amount is by definition a greater fool asset, and cannot be regarded as a store of value.

In spite of the above, it is useful insofar as it's capable of moving money from one location to another. That is utility that people pay for on the order of half a percent. Crypto's value relative to its useful work in this capacity is therefore on the order of (0.5% * {$,£,¥})/fee. A complication of the common claim of bitcoin's limited supply is that bitcoin doesn't have a monopoly on this utility, which means it doesn't have a monopoly on it's sole source of value, which means it's not effectively scarce.

This doesn't take into account the value of information work performed for a fee in the form of, say, smart contracts. When we can write and have the cloud execute something like a webserver, then the cryptocurrency has a value equal to (value of information work performance)/(gas fee). This is what I'm most optimistic about, as I would love to have a decentralized, anonymous webserver I can run by feeding quarters into the slot. It'll be the immediate downfall of crypto again, though, because the literal first use for it will be to host objectionable material.

For the most part, though, use crypto to move money from A to B, and quit caring what a given token is worth. If bitcoin is $1M, you shouldn't care, because if you want to move $20,000, then you're buying and selling 0.02 of a bitcoin instead of 0.8 of a bitcoin as quickly as possible. The only reason you care about the token's value is the product of value * transaction fee.

[sen]

I did the pizza thing back when bitcoin first started.

Ever since then (and through to currently) I use Bitcoin to pay for various things like my Mullvad account each year, torrent/etc services, random stuff like that.

Mostly because I’m really really lazy and it’s easier than finding then putting in my CC details.

[PaulHoule]

Another cryptocurrency. Bought some Bitcoin so I could buy some XRP because I wanted to run a Ripple node. I remember using some gateway that said you couldn’t use it if you lived in New York, where I live, but I used it anyway. It was about $50 worth.

[borissk]

Bought a CPU and motherboard from NewEgg a couple of months ago using BTC (through BitPay). Have also paid for Mullvad and iPredator VPN in the past using BTC.

[FlopV]

A pizza...