What's the best way to pay an online merchant using Crypto for someone who has never bought/used it before?
I trust the provider, and it's a small amount I'm willing to risk. Just don't want to throw it away, be frustrated, or get involved with shady people.
Android/Windows user, btw.
For those people who are wondering why I would ask Lemmy strangers about my money decisions, let me tell you my thinking.
I am in the decision making process. One of the things I do when making decisions is gather information from a variety of sources. I then weigh that information as to how useful I find it, research any possible leads, and use it as a launching point for my own investigation. I find that beats the hell out of googling whatever I can think up on my own in a field where I have no experience whatsoever.
For clarification, I'm not telling anyone else how to do anything. You humans live your life however you want, and I respect you as individuals with opinions of your own. Live how you want to live, choose how you want to choose, be how you want to be.
You're buying pornhub premium, aren't you? Unfortunately, I also wanted to buy something from a site that only took crypto as payment.
I ended up creating an account on Coinbase, which required a whole bunch of personal information from me. That was very concerning, but they seem like one of the few crypto sites that aren't totally shady. It's apparently a law they must follow to tie my personal information to all my crypto trades to prevent crime or something. After they verified my government IDs and bank account details, which took a day or so, I was authorized to buy crypto.
I bought the exact amount I needed. It took about 35 minutes to confirm the transfer, and only then did I realize coinbase takes a fee, which means I actually had less than I needed. I buy slightly more crypto, wait another 30 minutes for all the super cool futuristic cryptoblock hashing to be completed, and now I finally have enough crypto to buy that $20 thing I wanted.
I tell coinbase to send my 0.0000018364929038484920385 coins to xhfhfosnjwifbgnsoahdbfiaojdbfidhsbdmfodhsbd and the site eventually confirms the transfer after yet another 30 minutes of hashblocking.
It took me about 2 days and $30 to buy something for $20 using crypto, and I have never hated crypto bros so much ever for believing this is how all payments will work in the future.
Edit: I forgot to add that ever since then I receive a dozen crypto scam emails a day.
Uh, noooo? Did my mom tell you that? She's always lying about me!
Joking aside, people pay for porn? Are there upgrades?
I'm getting an invite for my son for one of the private servers I'm a member of. There's a discount for Crypto and I've been trying to up my privacy online but it appears Crypto is not the way. I'll pay with a card.
In all seriousness, I do actually pay for a few things using crypto, one example of which is a privacy-focused VPN. It’s quite painless once you get the hang of what you’re doing.
The first thing to note is that almost all cryptocurrencies are approximately 0% anonymous. There are some privacy focused cryptocurrencies, but with those it’ll add a required step of creating a personal wallet to act as a bridge. So if privacy is your goal, just know it’ll be a bit more involved. If it’s BTC or LTC, it will be trivially easy to trace back to your verified exchange account.
The other thing to note is required hold times when depositing fiat currency (such as dollars or euros). Unless you’re wiring the money or using an instant / near instant transfer method, the cryptocurrency exchange will often prevent you from transferring cryptocurrency away until the money is fully cleared (usually ~3–7 days).
Finally, I would recommend Kraken over Coinbase, primarily because their fees are lower but I also trust them more.
If you do want to use cryptocurrency, I’m happy to walk you through it here in this thread (Never respond to a private message that is crypto related, though because they may have your best interests at heart or they may not).
All that being said, it depends on the discount you’re getting, if it’s like 5% off, probably not worth the hassle. If it’s $100, might be worth it to you. Happy to help either way (even as a learning opportunity). No sweat if it’s just not worth it to you, that’s definitely fair and I certainly pay for most things with my credit card because it’s a lot easier.
Why would you hate someone for their beliefs? Is it really such a bad thing to hope and advocate for a future where government doesn't control the value of your money?
crypto = no underlying value (unless it was a 1:1 ratio with some measurement of electricity like a bond almost, ideally being a unit of energy we exchange unto itself)
so for now..
money = government
Plus, we'd need someway to independently run, manage, and maintain an autonomous system outside of the government controlled infrastructure. Which, unless we make serious energy/education/resource breakthroughs is not going to happen anytime soon sadly.
Crypto is a capitalism scam, not an anarchist idea. You should read up why governments want to regulate currency.
True anarchism of value is about owning the means of value. The black market is common people eschewing government set value. Crypto is a grift like inflated stocks where the last one holding it is the loser.
At this point with crypto, you're going to give away the same amount of information when you buy it on an exchange versus just giving your credit card details over. If you like the extra steps and hassle then go for it, but if you're just buying porn well then, it's probably just easier to give them your credit card
Kinda depends on what you're buying. If you're buying something illicit, then there are a few extra steps that you need to worry about, like downloading the Monero blockchain, and finding an exchange where you can convert your Bitcoin (BTC) to Monero. Yes, BTC can be traced; Coinbase, Circle, et al. will close your account if the wallet address you're sending money to is someone that you shouldn't be sending money to. (And they need a lot of information about you because too many people have used crypto to try and circumvent money laundering laws.)
The nice thing about BTC (and Monero) is that you can buy things overseas--assuming that you have some level of trust with the seller--when credit cards, bank cards, etc., will likely forbid the transaction, or charge steep fees for it.
To do the basic things with Coinbase, etc., you'll need to open an account, give them a lot of proof that you are who you say you are (because of regulations on banks), and link to a bank account. You will buy cryptocurrency either with a credit/debit card (high fees, low limits, and quick turnaround times) or bank transfer (lower fees, high limits, very slow turnaround time). Once the transaction is complete--which might take up to about two weeks), you will have a fixed amount of BTC; the value of that will vary based on what it's currently trading at.
To send money, you'll need a wallet address. Every time you send BTC, there will be a network fee; that's a fraction of the funds that are used to pay the people that are doing the computations on their computers (mining rigs) needed to confirm the transfer of funds. The higher you opt to set the fees, the faster the transfer will confirm; it can be five minutes to about an hour. You should get confirmations.
If you're setting up your own wallet, there are a few more steps to go through. Be aware that setting up offline storage can be a bit of a pain, but is quite a bit more secure than using an exchange to store your currency, as long as you don't lose a hard drive, have a major computer crash, etc.
I'm not gonna speculate on what you're buying, but I'm afraid you're gonna get involved with shady people no matter what if you're using cryptocurrency. the entire industry is in the midst of a cascade failure thanks to Three Arrows Capital going toes up, and con artists and thieves are cashing in. cryptocurrency exchanges are using their own customers' money for not-so-good purposes, stablecoins are rapidly losing their pegs, and it seems like a bridge gets cracked every other day. my advice? if you don't want to deal with shadiness, you really shouldn't use cryptocurrency at all.
Oh, my mind is made up, and there's clearly no reason to use Crypto for anything. A dumpster fire if there ever was one. I'll be a spectator, not a participant.
Watching people bitching and whine about technology like crypto and AI while I just use it like a normal human that's uses technology to make my life easy is fun. My life is getting easier, if you learned how to use technology instead of bitch moan and drag your heels. You know old people that can't send a email? You'll be an old person that can't pay for your food in 30 years.
You do realize that you've skipped about 70 steps, right? OP needs to figure out what currency the recipient wants, pick a wallet app (most of the ones people recommend are god-awful), install it, create a wallet, figure out how to store keys for the wallet safely (which is really not possible), figure out how to add funds to the wallet in the right currency, pay attention to the transaction to make sure the right amount of funds are being transacted... and each of those steps has a dozen substeps, and requires research in an industry that is constantly lying to people.
... plus, OP did not say that there was a QR code involved at all, that's a very odd assumption on your part.
You have to choose a bank, then you have to pick which credit card you want based on credit limits rewards and invest rates. Either go to that bank or install their app to activate your credit card. Then you have to store those numbers which are visible right on the cards and transmitted wireless safely(which is not possible), figure out how to pay off your credit card. Make sure there aren't any fraudulent charges, double, fees etc. And each of those steps has a dozen subsets, and requires trust in an industry that is constantly wait, never lies to people.
You sound like a boomer that still uses cash and doesn't know your phone has been able to be your credit card for the last decade.