Ask HN: Is anyone using BTC or cryptocurrencies for transactions

I tried to transact in BTC and BCH to donate to a s/w charity. The fees exceeded the value of the donation I had in mind. The protocol was not good, I sat behind a 15min time window which didn't complete in time. The representation (a URl like model) was not clear, i was scared the element behind the URL wasn't actually a BTC address, couldn't check quickly. Overall, I'd say transacting is hard.

Which is a shame, because if its not useful to transact small sums, its only really relevant to transact big sums. And that means its future really is IBM and FinTech, not mediating outcomes for small sum people like me. (I'm not interested in the speculative quality)

There are signals the charity sector is looking to use it to get rid of some graft in the emergency-intervention situation where a lot of freeloaders can pile in as middlemen in a transaction chain. That would be really good.

I don't, and I think part of why it's not used so much for transactions is privacy. Most cryptocurrencies provide a public log of all transactions.

Bitcoin Private https://btcprivate.org/whitepaper.pdf will add privacy, we'll see how it goes. Also LiteCoin is introducing LitePay in a few days, which might change things.

NewYorkCoin https://www.wsj.com/articles/newyorkcoin-gains-traction-in-c... is actually used as currency in NYC, and is fast enough and has no transaction fees.

So we're at the early stages of things, but between Bitcoin Private, Litecoin, and NYCoin, I expect lots more people will be buying with cryptocurrencies over the course of 2018

No. It not economical to get the currency. It costs too much hardware and electricity to earn it. And the inflation from my nations's currency doesn't out weigh the advantages to just exchange it.

Plus there nothing physically backing up the cryptocurrency. Which means as soon as the public looses confidence it nothing more then. Also what happens if the internet goes down? There no way to access your wallet.