8. There was once a way to pay for burritos from a specific restaurant using Bitcoin.
9. Everything else
It really shouldn't be a surprise that lawmakers have taken a dim view of the subject. That said, there are a handful of legitimate uses for cryptocurrency, but it's hard not to think that we could find better alternatives for those use cases, especially given the disastrous environmental impact of many of these crypto schemes.
Personally I have been using Bitcoin for legal & legit use cases for years. It is primarily a hobby, but personally I believe in the long run it will also benefit me financially. As a personal savings and checking account it works, though the volatility for many is understandably hard to bear.
For online purchases in my country Bitcoin works very nicely. Also for travel related purchases. I would estimate that maybe 60-70% of my purchases are in Bitcoin these days.
Groceries I don't buy with BTC, because it is not possible. But basically all household items, thanks to several big online retailers accepting BTC in my country. Also all travel related stuff, hotels, flights, etc.
I very rarely use BTC in brick-n-mortar setups, in the last year once in a restaurant where I had a bigger bill and they had recently started accepting it - went actually very fluently.
It is not really that much different lifestyle to any normal life, I just pay with BTC where it works. And these days it works very fluently in online setups in my experience.
The lifestyles not that different, except the relative value of the currency you use on apparently a daily basis has dropped 52% this year? Do you hold bitcoin, or just convert whatever your employer pays you in fiat into btc every two weeks? With a limited number of potential retailers, how do you comparison shop? How do retailers handle pricing and the volatility of bitcoin?
I just don't see how this is at all possible. Like, who are you paying bitcoin to for flights?
But what are the advantages of BTC in these cases? Transaction fees + Processing Times are so high that make it uninteresting for many people.
It feels like translating the real value of something (say $5) to something else (e.g., 0.01 BTC) with every purchase. It's just overhead at this point.
It's life as usual - the biggest mainstream webshops here accept Bitcoin. I can buy anything I want that way - groceries, tech gadgets, kitchen machinery, garden equipment, whatever - with same-day or next-day delivery. The mainstream concert ticket sellers also accept BTC here. Not sure about plane travel, but I can use BTC to buy train tickets.
If I can't use Bitcoin at a store directly, I can simply take out some cash at a nearby Bitcoin ATM - nowadays there's more BTC ATMs than my bank's ATMs.
With Bitcoin directly? You'll be quite limited (though not impossible). If you are looking for non-KYC off-ramps, there are many; especially if you are living in a country where cash is widely accepted. P2P Bitcoin trading is quite widespread, though it requires some due diligence to find reasonable and trustworthy people to exchange with.
For most of your online purchases, you can go with a gift-card; though it's an annoyance compared to just having one single card with rewards and cashback.
I read this and think ".. and a16z is doubling, even tripling down on cryptocurrency?" Do they not have the self/brand awareness that they are over-indexing on this area? It doesn't deserve zero funding, but maybe not launching fund over fund dedicated to it? Did a16z jump the shark?
Hacker news is a bubble of crypto haters, everything positive gets downvoted here.
There are hundreds of apps in DeFi, was 250B invested, over 10MM paid per day just in transaction fees, and 20k developers. The amount of users is growing as fast as the internet was during the 90s (we're equivalent to 1998 now) and almost every usage graph is up and to the right exponentially. Can see many of the metrics at https://defillama.com and https://link.medium.com/readqva7brb
Ethereum by the metrics looks like the greatest startup investment of all time. It was also the quickest to reach $500B market cap. But alas many are going to miss out because they miss the forest for the trees.
A16Z is definitely making the right moves based on the metrics. HN folk are blinded by emotions, and not bothering to do the research. The person you're responding to doesn't even know DeFi.
If you want to understand what DeFi is check my post history. I often talk about it yet every crypto thread is always the same dumb "only criminals use it" comments voted to the top.
In practice the primary use cases for Crypto Currency are:
1. Running scams (see: NFTs, most exchanges, etc...)
2. Speculation (HODL)
3. Laundering dirty money
4. Buying contraband (drugs, guns, etc...)
5. Tax evasion
6. Extortion payments (crypto-locking viruses, etc...)
7. 419 scam payments
8. There was once a way to pay for burritos from a specific restaurant using Bitcoin.
9. Everything else
It really shouldn't be a surprise that lawmakers have taken a dim view of the subject. That said, there are a handful of legitimate uses for cryptocurrency, but it's hard not to think that we could find better alternatives for those use cases, especially given the disastrous environmental impact of many of these crypto schemes.