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Are you using it as internet currency?

I don't know anyone who paid anything with it in the last 12 months.




I’ve been paying multiple people and teams remotely via btc in the past years. Even if you can send a wire, sometimes it can be cheaper/easier to send crypto. But in many cases it’s not even possible to send large amounts of money without incurring massive fees (international paypal, western union, etc). Moved hundeds of thousands of dollars this way by now for purely legal economical reasons, helping a bunch of people make money they would not make otherwise.

Edit: relatedly, not everybody wants to pay their local taxes (and who am I to judge people in various life situations?). This itself is a _massive_ saver for the folks. Send somebody $5k usd a couple times and their bank will start asking complicated questions.


And how do you put the crypto payments into your tax reports?


Seems pretty easy. My country's tax forms dont distinguish between how you got paid, just that you got paid. Gov doesn't care if it was through a bank, in gold bars, bitcoin, etc (capital gains they care more about of course)


I’m using the Bitcoin Lightning Network to support podcasts every week or so. https://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/boost/


Interesting.

Reading through the page, that sounds super complicated though.

Couldn't the podcasts simply put a lightning invoice (Which is just a string of text I guess?) on their website with a text like "Support us via Lightning: 1f73ac220b9..."?


A lot of the work with Podcasting 2.0 is moving things into apps like Fountain or Castamatic. By all accounts, people are way way more likely to engage if they don't have to leave their app.

There's crypto-less features that Podcasting 2.0 adds like livestream notifications and transcriptions. Apple actually just added transcriptions to their app officially!


What's wrong about the web for listening to podcasts? Why do I need an app?

And couldn't the "Support us via lightning: 1f73ac220b9..." link have a protocol like "lightning://" prefixed, so when the users clicks it, their preferred payment method pops up?


Actually the Podcasting 2.0 app Fountain does have a web app! https://www.fountain.fm/radio

By all accounts though (podcasting stats) people almost always listen to them on mobile devices, an app being the logical choice there.

The hosted lightning wallet Alby does have similar functionality you're thinking of, it's built as a browser plugin though. https://getalby.com


With a regular cryptocurrency they could just post an address or QR code and anyone can send it using a wallet at any time (no need for them to be online or anything).


Lightning allows single sats worth of micro-payments in real-time, perfect for tossing a few bucks someone's way vs. paying much higher fees and waiting for blocks.

The Podcasting 2.0 spec also includes the "Boostgrams" feature allowing you to send messages to the creator with your payment.

Speaking of offline support the recently announced Hedgehog protocol builds off of lightning and is much more asynchronous.

https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/super-testnet-introduces-hed...


I use it everywhere where it's an option (so not very often, let's say once a month). I also only use privacy services (vpn for example) where you can pay using cryptocurrency, otherwise what's the point


What are some other examples, except for a VPN where you use crypto to pay?

And how is the situation around the world - are retailers who offer digital goods/services allowed to accept crypto as payments?


There was a sketchy looking file sharing website where someone had posted some incredibly hard to find audio tracks that I really wanted, but the website required a subscription. Paying with a cc meant automatically-recurring payments, but I paid with bitcoin, got my files, and knew the website couldn’t get any money from me after that.


There are hardly any retailers accepting it in the US. Wonder how it is in El Salvador, since they made BTC legal tender.


In most of the places it’s trivial to exchange crypto for local currency in p2p fashion, often for cash.


Yes




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