3 Altcoins for your 'everyday' usage.

in LeoFinance3 years ago (edited)

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A few days ago @revise.leo challenged me to talk about 5 coins which you can 'use' apart from HIVE & Bitcoin.

Today I'm bringing up a few of those selected coins. Need to say that in fact, this is somewhat difficult, because 99% of the market use cases are 'speculation/staking-only' and actually I prefer to talk about things that I actually use/see value.

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In this post, (and after giving it a few hard thoughts) I won't talk about 'pumpamentals', DEFI or partnerships (edit: try to!), I'll only talk about 'what you can actually do with this coin rather than speculate'.

I'm bringing up 3 coins which I'm CURRENTLY using.

Why not 5? Because I prefer to keep the list short as your attention as a reader is a valuable resource and I don't want to spread it between half a dozen coins.

2 Of those coins are pretty straightforward, the other one is almost 'crossing the line of the speculation', but it gives me a point to talk about something underrated in the crypto space; hedging & protection.

Okay, I'm already talking too much. Let's go with the theme of the post.


#1 Usecase: Payments & Purchases - Swipe Token ($SXP)

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It's Easy. You lock up SXP tokens --> You start saving massively in your day to day purchases.

Swipe is a company who offers a debit card which you can fund with your crypto holdings and pay for for your everyday expenses.

You basically lock up your coins for 6 months in their wallet in a tiered system and they send your card in 1-2 weeks.

The advantages for doing such a thing are massive, let's check it out what you can receive in their 'middle' level which requires staking 300 SXP for 6 months (~240$ at the time of writing):

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To summarize;

  • Free Spotify (worth 6,99€/month)
  • Free Netflix (worth 7,99€/month)
  • Free Amazon Prime (worth 3,99€/month)

And the best; 2% Cash Back on all purchases paid in BITCOIN!

Maybe it doesn't sound like a very 'good deal', because only the memberships of that programs don't justify the price IMHO (in fact I'm very used to their free versions and I can share 1 Netflix account with 2-3 friends), but for a lot of people this is an expense which they're dealing with anyway.

After all, we're talking about a bit more than ~15€/month which adds up to ~180€/year. If you're already using these services the membership pays by itself.

The juicy thing is the 2% cashback.

Let's say that you usually spend 500€/month on day-to-day expenses;

250€ in food
150€ in fuel
100€ in leisure/miscellaneous

500€/month in expenses adds up to 10€ in cashback. The 'coolest' part of this is that we're talking about money that you would have spent anyway. How cool is that?

You're also receiving your cashback in Bitcoin, which given enough time, it will increase in value vs fiat. I've been experiencing this lately, and it feels awesome.

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Also, bear in mind that the 300 SXP tokens are still yours, so technically this card isn't a 'paid membership'.

Swipe also has a referral program, If you don't mind and you're interested use the code 'KDK77P' when you register into the Swipe app.


#2 Usecase: Travel & Leisure - Travala Token $AVA

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Travala and their Smart program have been one of my all-time favourites crypto use-case. Similar to Swipe, the premise is easy; lock AVA tokens and enjoy cheaper travelling.

In that case, the lock-up period is fairly small (30 days); and as long as you keep your coins locked in their tiered system you'll be receiving the following advantages:

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  • Up to 5% discount for selected bookings (applied directly).
  • Up to 5% giveback/cashback on selected bookings.
  • Staking rewards of 24% APY of your locked AVA amount.

Just for clarification, mention that this 'up to' is because of the tiered system, you can lock a minimum of 500 AVA (360$ at time of writing) and a maximum of 5000 AVA (3600$).

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I'm enjoying the highest level which basically means that I'm receiving around ~72$/month in staking rewards (half paid in AVA, the other half in travel credits which are spendable only on the platform).

Being AVA a pretty scarce token which increased a lot in value this year, I start to experience things like this one:

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Back in March (prior to all the lockdowns) I received a giveback of 22,5 AVA for a hotel night worth 70€ at the time.

Now this 22,5 AVA are worth 16,2€ which equals to ~23% of the booking value back at the time(not counting other discounts that I enjoyed back at the time). Not a bad deal right?

I encourage everyone to try Travala vs Booking/Agoda. The savings are serious.

If you dare to try, use my reflink and if you manage to make a booking worth ~180€ or more, we'll receive both 23€. Let me know if you do and I'll be sharing a fat LEO upvote with you :)


#3 Usecase: Crypto Index + Hedge - Base Protocol $BASE

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I know that @revise.leo won't approve this as a 'usecase' but I'm sharing it anyway because I find the idea pretty interesting (the token is a pump&dump at the moment of only 11 days old, so please, caution because this is high risk).

(I know, I know... I shouldn't' be touching these things... but try to understand my point, get a joint or something)

At their essence, the $BASE token is a synthetic token with a rebasing mechanism (remember Ampleforth $AMPL?). That means that their SUPPLY contracts/expand every day depending on another factor.

And that 'other factor' is the 'total market cap' of all the cryptocurrencies at a 1:1 trillion ratio.

That means, that if now the total market cap of the entire market is 532 Billion, the 'peg' price for $BASE will be 0,532$

  • If the price is higher, the supply will expand and will be equally shared between all the holders. This artificially created supply 'should' force the price to return back to the peg.

  • If the price is lower, the supply will contract and all the holders will see their BASE holdings decrease ('Who stole my coins?'). This artificially created scarcity 'should' force the price to return back up to the peg.

Even if it seems like a Degenerate DEFI thing at first sight ( in fact it is). Try to imagine the following use-case/experiment:

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If the price of the token is forced to follow the total market cap of the entire market, that means that in an 'ideal world' this should act as a 'Crypto Index', benefiting from all the growth of the market.

My instant thought while researching this was:

If I get some $BASE and I put it with $ETH in a Uniswap Pool, I'm being exposed to all the market at once (+ getting fees). Where is the 'staking program for this shit?

Which brought to me the following thought:

What If we (everyone) received our fair share of inflation... every time the printer goes 'brrrrr'¿?


Then the crypto space wouldn't be necessary, because we would be already living in an 'ideal world'.

But I'm here because I have 0 trust in the legacy system...

and this doesn't look like it's going to change anytime soon.

And for that reason, I'm bullish on Bitcoin, Ethereum, all the things that cut middlemen services offered by banks, like what's trying to do the DeFi industry.

we need to keep trying things like BASE Protocol (but I'm thinking more about Bitcoin there) because it's our hedge Vs. the legacy System.

I have distorted a little the theme of the post at the end, sorry.

We have two valid use-cases and a half, then? I'll talk another day about more shitcoins. Maybe next week..

Thanks for reading and enjoy your weekend.

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I think I'll give you an solid A grade for your assignment,

Three varied coins, all with great use cases and a great write up too.

I would give you an A + but I downgraded you because we'll have Trumpman making another 'pump my bags' comment about AVA.

You're tempting me to buy all of them, well more AVA, I already have a little! I'll explore the others for sure.

The only reason I haven't bought more AVA is because I don't travel much - You're probably aware I'm buying land soon, my feeling is very much to stay put and grow things, so it doesn't really fit with my lifestyle, but I do get it as an investment for sure.

I think Leo goes without saying, in response to Khal's comment!

Base sounds like a punt, but I'm not averse to a punt!

Great post!!!!

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Hehehe, you made me laugh. Happy if you enjoyed it :)

To be completely honest, I shilled AVA first to trumpman, so I should say sorry because in some way I'm guilty xD

Don't hesitate, If I had to decide which portfolio allocation I'm giving to those coins, I'll be giving AVA a 95% weight.

I would only hold enough SXP to get the card that I want 300-3000 SXP is the sweet spot and I would only go with a 1% of the portfolio into BASE (coz it's a risk bet at this stage).

You don't need to Travel to benefit from AVA. If you stake up to 5K AVA you're getting 50 AVA/month with are completely withdrawable (~35$ at current prices approx).

Regarding the Travel credits, you can always save them for later and/or book for a friend/familiar. The points never expire.

Let me know if you need more info regarding AVA, I'm involved with the porject since January of the previous year and I've been helping them with the Spanish translation of the site (which should be coming soon though, still to be announced).

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OK Cheers, AVA sounding more tempting now!

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Pump my bags silly

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I probably am going to aim for a minimum stake!

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$BASE has a very interesting use case. The issue is how they are going to maintain the peg. $BASE can act like an index fund for the entire crypto market. But I don't see a reason to HODL for the long term without any assurance on the maintaining of the peg. Even DEC has not been able to hold its value at $0.001 despite your ability to make purchases at @splinterlands at the $0.001/DEC price.

As for use cases, I would seriously recommend Dash. https://www.dash.org is everything BTC aimed to be. You already have 1 second transactions with InstantSend feature. You have privacy with PrivateSend (on chain mixing service with 4-16 mixing rounds the last time I checked). Dash is literally the first DAO. At ATH they had $10 Million USD monthly budget.

Dash became hugely popular in Venezuela. You can take a look at https://discoverdash.com for Dash accepting businesses


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The issue is how they are going to maintain the peg.

I guess you didn't understand (or maybe I didn't explain well enough).

As I said, $BASE is a synthetic token, with a rebase mechanism and therefore what's called an 'elastic' supply. The 'price' of the token 'doesn't matter that much', what matters is the market cap.

Why? Because you're receiving/losing coins depending on the price.

For example, let's say that the price peg is 0,5$ and the actual price of the coin is 1$.

At 22 pm the coin 'rebases' and will increase their supply in a 100% (everyone will see their coins doubled). That, obviously will generate selling pressure that will 'hopefully' make the price to return to their peg.

Hope that helps.


I don't like Dash, but that's true that's helping a lot of people in Venezuela. Compare BTC with all the other coins it's a mistake. Nothing is as 'decentralized' as Bitcoin.

Cheers

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pretty solid comment, complete with graphs and charts!

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LEO is an obvious one for me, but I'm glad your post focused on non-LEO stuff.

We need more generalized crypto content like this on LeoFinance 🦁

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Yeah I agree that's why I also didn't use leo

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Revise asked me about coins outside of Bitcoin and Hive, ofc I consider LEO a good hold :)

My days of LEO shiller and price manipulator has (gladly) come to an end. Now everything is about sharing good vibes and the word out there.

I'll keep working on 'general' content, probably I'm starting a series of posts in Spanish, dunno yet

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Is AVA actually up and running yet? I was under the impression that one was still in the development stage. Nice overview here! I can tell you really put a lot of time and thought into this.

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Hey bozz, how it's going? :)

I don't remember seeing you before on my posts, thx for taking a seat.

Regarding AVA, yes, they have the business up and running since December 2018 and with increasing revenues almost month after month even in these hard COVID times, check this graph of monthly revenue revenue.png

You can check more details about the site there:

https://travala-dashboard.com/

Ask if you have any doubt more :) And thanks!

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Thanks for the info! Is that token on ETH? Just wondering how horrible the gas fees are going to be.

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Nope, working on Binance Chain, check more details:

https://explorer.binance.org/asset/AVA-645

Ah, Binance is out for me in the US.

You really really have to check out CRO. Only reason I don't have their card is because it's not available in my region. You already like Swipe Token ($SXP) So you're going to love CRO. IMHO I think Crypto.com is even better.

It's 8% Cashback Cryptoback!


It's No Just A Card - It's DeFi

Visit https://crypto.com and you'll see so many services like their own exchange, portfolio management an so much more. It's almost a rabbit hole if real world usage of your crypto assets.

Even Credit Card Channels Are Slow To Crypto.com

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Meh, you can't even compare. In my humble opinion CRO is a bad shitcoin.

Infinite supply (same as XRP), lower perks and higher prices compared to swipe... and they fucked me hard with the MCO --> CRO conversion. They only lowered their rates after other competitors like Swipe entered the game.

I locked with them ~50 MCO back in April and I STILL DON'T HAVE THE CARD. Not going to mess with them anymore after a couple of times trying it. The remaining 1000 CRO will be withdrawable in less than a week and I'l say 'chao chao'.

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MCO --> CRO conversion

That sucked! I didn't become a victim cause I sold my MCO around ATH days because I wasn't seeing any timeline on releasing cards in my region.

I can afford to have a Swipe Sky card. But they are not available in my region either. I guess I'll have to wait a few years for any crypto card anyways. I'll HODL strong.

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Nice tips, @empoderat.

There's life apart from LEO tokens, haha.

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Very thoughtful question by revise and you made a brilliant post.

Crypto that can used for everyday needs will increase the adoption manifolds.

Will you like to write about "penny crypto stocks" in which one can bet.

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Going to work on it sooner rather than later, give me some time and I'm your man.

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I actually like the STORJ and Filecoin's
using them for decentralized storage of files instead of things like AWS.

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Don't forget SIA. They've already got some nice decentralized storage solutions at work at super cheap prices :)

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Solid read buddy...The best thing I liked in your coins is it's use case. I am not active in other coins but i surely look into it. I am limited to hive and leo. Looking forward to see more such posts. ♥

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Travala's lockup period is quite good, actually, the traveling ticket you get, can you use it to exchange Ava? It seemed it's kinda scarce or do you prefer how it's being shared to you?
Keeping is small is good as you didn't mention celcuis at all, good to go.

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Whe you stake in the smart program you receive a 24% APY of your locked amount of AVA.

Let's say that that you stake 1000 and get a smart2, besides the discounts, you'll receive every month:

  • 10 AVA (1% monthly * 12 = 12%)
  • Travel credits worth an other 1% (If AVA price 1$, you'll receive 10 Travel credits).

So, 12% in AVA and the other 12% in travel credits (1 Travel credit = 1$).

can you use it to exchange Ava?

Nope, you can only use the TC in the platform.

Hope that helps.

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Hope that helps.

That definetly helps, look at all those sweet offer. Imagine what one can accomplish with a nice capital

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Thanks for mentioning $SXP. I'll look into it.

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The SXP looks really interesting! I wonder can it be used outside Europe?

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Frankly, I don't know. The better might be to ask in their live support (usually answer within minutes and they have been very helpful with me).

https://swipe.zendesk.com/hc/en-us (bottom right screen)

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i knew about the first and the second one but had no idea about the third one. the funny or sad thing depending on how you see it, is that i have 0$ to invest in anything :p

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Everyone is at that point from time to time... But is relative, Try to sell something that you don't use to get a few spare bucks. 20$ here and 50$ there adds up on the long term.

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Don't get me wrong on this one but the first two projects have close ties to Binance and I'm not touching anything that they are financing or supporting. On the other hand, I had a look at Base and I love the idea since elastic protocols are just popping up. The problem here is how to incentivize people to hold rather than to sell.

Badger DAO is doing the same thing with the Digg token that will be elastic and pegged to the price of BTC. Right now they are figuring out how to prevent early receivers from selling it constantly and inflating the token to infinity.

All in all, elastic protocols will be very interesting to follow. As for Travala and Swipe, I will pass this time. Glad it is working out for you though.

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Don't get me wrong on this one but the first two projects have close ties to Binance and I'm not touching anything that they are financing or supporting. On the other hand, I had a look at Base and I love the idea since elastic protocols are just popping up. The problem here is how to incentivize people to hold rather than to sell.

Then you shouldn't touch Bitcoin because they're 'supporting' it? I don't want to seem rude but I think Binance isn't our enemy and nobody can't deny that they made a LOT for this industry.

If you don't touch something because 'it has ties with' will make you miss out a lot. Anyway, everybody has a red line I guess, Mine is with Justin sun, for example.

Regarding Binance, It's true that what happened in the past with all the steem/hive drama sucks (and hard!), but you'll have to 'forgive and move on' eventually.

Don't get me wrong, only trying to be constructive :)

The thing with Bitcoin is completely different. They are investors (and probably partial overs) at Travala and Swipe. Since my red line is just the same as your red line (Not touching anything created or stolen by JS) I added an extra security measure since CZ and JS are very close friends. Too close for comfort actually.

Again, I have nothing against people using these products, I just think more people will start using this same logic once they have more info on the shady business going on with Binance. And if I miss out, it's not a big deal. I'm here for community-driven projects, not corporate-backed ones.

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I think this article contained some valuable information. I travel a lot for work, so I will definitely look into turning my traveling into Bitcoin!
I think the AVA has potential, I will figure out where to buy it, that I have an account. It might be on Poloniex?
As for the DeFi token, I love DeFI but need to read more about the token to understand how I profit.
Thanks
@shortsegments

P,S,
Thats one of my favorite characters to play in Naruto!
I haven't played for a while, but the picture is supercool
I will follow you on Twitter! and Retweet this post for starters!

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Any debit card that you are aware of which accepts stable coins that you can spend all around. I wouldn't spend any other crypto at this moment to be honest.

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The swipe card accepts a wide range of coins. You can 'charge' your card with USDT for example.

You can even receive the cashbacks in PAX (Paxos standard token stablecoin). But BTC is a no brainer IMO.

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Swipe it is then. I am thinking for a while to buy myself a crypto to fiat card but want one who supports stablecoins. I won't spend BTC or ETH or any other volatile one on groceries. What monthly fees do they have and how long it takes to deliver the cards?

0 Fees.

They took a bit less than 2 weeks since I got confirmation that they sent it.

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Thanks. Seems legit.

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Congratulations @empoderat! You have completed the following achievement on the Hive blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :

You made more than 700 comments. Your next target is to reach 800 comments.

You can view your badges on your board and compare yourself to others in the Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word STOP

Do not miss the last post from @hivebuzz:

The Hive Gamification Proposal #2

I don't use them but I use etn for phone recharge

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Care because it's a bit of a serious shitcoin. Don't advise to hold it.

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Is BASE based?

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Sorry amigo no entiendo

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I think they are good ideas because you enjoy three things one you invest two you enjoy services and three you get rewarded.
I think there is no better idea than that.

Dude, how did you do that? gifs were amazing, I really liked the psy and the elon musk haha

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Glad that you liked them. Quick tutorial:

1 - Go to giphy.com and search your desired gif https://giphy.com/

2- look for the 'copy link' button

example.png

3- Paste the 'gif link' in a comment/post (yes, here on peakd/leofinance).

That's it!

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I learned more tips from the article

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I can understand some of your points but you lost me completely when you started to mention that Bitcoin Myk. How can you say that's 'fundamentally more solid' lol?

Seeing that you're the issuer, now I can understand...

I don't want to judge you, but using the 'bitcoin' brand alone to try to promote your 'product' it's a scam in my eyes... Don't know about your real intentions and in someway I appreciate your comment... but... BUT!

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