I’ve heard the argument that low transaction fees are one of the advantages of cryptocurrency payments – but in my experience this isn’t remotely true comparing gas fees vs. a traditional payment method. For that matter, they’re not particularly quick or simple transactions either. It seems strange that this is consistently touted as one of the major reasons why cryptocurrency will become widely adopted in the future.
What am I missing?
In: 5
Keep in mind that ALL of the arguments why cryptocurrency will become widely adopted in the future are just hypothetical.
In fact, it’s quite possible that crypto will never become widely adopted.
While there are admittedly some potential benefits of crypto, things really aren’t looking good in the short term. Hardly anybody is using it for everyday transactions like you’re talking about, and 99% of the transactions are either illegal goods and services, outright fraud, or speculation.
As you discovered, there’s almost no benefit to using crypto for an ordinary transaction, and there are a lot of drawbacks:
* It can take a long time for the transaction to complete – minutes instead of seconds
* The transaction fees are higher than credit cards
* The price of crypto relative to normal currency (USD) fluctuates too much; nobody prices things in Bitcoin because they’d have to change the price *daily.*
* Crypto offers far less protection than credit cards. If someone steals your crypto, it’s gone, just like cash you dropped on the street.
* The association with illegal activities doesn’t help – when 99% of crypto transactions are fraudulent, that makes people suspicious
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