As the elites are trying to push us into a total centralization dystopia where money could no longer ever be free (unprogrammable), alternative payment options, including crypto payments, arise.
Recently, I stumbled upon Spendl, a service that "offers free virtual cards" that can be topped up with Bitcoin and ready to use the sats one wishes to spend almost everywhere... This is something I appreciate a lot, although I personally am not into spending sats; I'm more of a stablecoin user.
Lately, I've been thinking about mass adoption for cryptocurrencies in the midst of the "silent crackdown" that the crypto industry is undergoing, with all sorts of institutions trying to "kill the on and off ramps" that we have. This is a problem, but on the other hand, seeing crypto as nothing more than a speculative asset is also a problem.
The way I see it, and I might be a bit old school in this regard, some cryptos are for spending, and others are not. We are all individuals with different views, life expectations, and individual living, thus we can't all think alike.
Hence, some of us are comfortable with spending crypto, others are hoarding as much as possible, some have turned it into passive income through generating yield, while others, like some fatty whales on Hive, decided to increase their stake in HIVE so that they can have more influence over the blockchain. As above (real life), so below (crypto world).
There aren't many options available out there for spending crypto, and even in the case of the current ones, you're not actually paying anything with crypto when using such services (Binance card, crypto.com card, etc.). You're actually indirectly instant dumping the amount of crypto necessary to pay for the item you just chose to pay with crypto.
I guess El Salvador and probably Lugano, Switzerland, are the very few places on earth where one can directly use cryptocurrencies for everyday expenses. My take is that in a few years from now, we will see that as an option coming from Twitter and probably Facebook too...
Oh, and I almost forgot, HBD is becoming a "spending crypto" for a while, from what I'm seeing in some of the posts coming from the Cuban and Venezuelan communities.
I do spend crypto, and I do that quite often because I live off this thing, and sometimes I have regrets regarding it, but these regrets are easy to overcome when reminiscing on the shitty and stressful life that I traded for the ability to live off crypto. While I cannot afford (for now) to build myself a decent HIVE stack and increase my portfolio, I am happy that I managed to evade the fucking 9-5 system that I hate so much.
All of my life, I have had nothing but shitty jobs, and being able to do something that I love and be involved in an economy that is "by the people and for the people" is such an accomplishment. One day (hopefully), I will be able to spend the interest I will be getting for putting HBD into savings, but for now, I have to use Spendl to spend a few good hundred dollars a month worth of crypto for my living.
I do believe that as we will be pushed more into participating in the emerging crypto economy, spending cryptocurrencies (not necessarily Bitcoin) will be as natural as doing that with euros or dollars. What about you? Do you ever spend crypto?
Thanks for your attention,
Adrian