I feel like the value of a currency is defined by what you can purchase with it.
I am all for Bitcoin, Steem, or whatever currency is your favorite, but am I the only one that thinks if you are going to have a currency, it should be useful for something other black market BS?
Steem- nearly impossible to spend for something other than a nifty Steem hat or post promotion.
Bitcoin is accepted at a few places, but fees seem high.
USD- why bother changing something into crypto only to turn it back to USD? eliminate the middle man.
Am I missing something here? Why the attraction to currencies that are difficult to spend? Are we just waiting for the markets to develop?
I am hoping some of you crypto fans will bring some light to this. Without a market, money in any form seems useless. Buying money that has no legit purpose seems like a foolish endeavor.
Leave your answers in the comments below. Tell me, what have you purchased in the last week with crypto?
UPDATE
@dromzz provided a great link: There is this thing where you can buy Amazon gift cards with Steem
It appears to be legit. I will give it a shot at the end of the week when some of my posts pay out. It looks promising. Still a bit clunky if they have to physically mail you a card. I am not sure how that goes.
In principle I agree with you. But you're missing a few points:
a) All this is only developing just now and needs time. The Wright Brothers didn't give up on flying just because it wasn't possible to cross an ocean right off the bat.
b) There are powerful forces arrayed against this technology because they stand to lose control of their system we are all slaves to.
c) There is a way to spend crypto anywhere: debit or prepaid VISA / MC. One company blew it with VISA on unrelated issues, but others are standing ready to take up the slack. Give it time. https://www.mona.co
d) In the Steem ecosystem you can reward great content and support creators directly and in various ways. Or you can BE rewarded. On Facebook you're only rewarding Zuckerberg. What's there to complain about? The fact you can't spend Steem directly on overpriced horse piss at Starbucks? Boohoo!
I like the concept of steemit as a platform. My post was about crypto in general. There was a time when acceptance appeared to be expanding for Bitcoin. Now it appears to be contracting. The fees are excessive. Converting to USD on a card gives you an outlet but does nothing to justify the existence of the 2nd party currency. I get that it is in alpha or beta, but to be truly useful, a market that utilizes the currency is necessary. Incentives for vendors that accept the currency are necessary
There is this thing where you can buy Amazon gift cards with Steem https://steem.cards/
I haven't tried it but if it works as supposed Steem could be little more useful at least to me
same guy has a link to this: https://steemit.com/steemdev/@cointopolis/the-largest-cryptocurrency-ecommerce-site-is-emerging-you-can-be-a-part-of-it
Thanks. I'll try that one too. And if you buy one of those gift cards tell me how it went :)
That site looks like it only sells drop shipped items from China for 2x the price you can buy them from Ebay
I am down for any way you can possibly make steem work in the real world. I will give this one a try. Looks awesome if it works!
High fees when using BTC.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/19/big-transactions-fees-are-a-problem-for-bitcoin.html