Asklemmy

43851 readers

1645 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

What's the best way to pay an online merchant using Crypto for someone who has never bought/used it before? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

26 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

Much peace to all ✌️

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] HelixDab2@lemm.ee 4 points 10 months ago

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.