I am just curious why is it not a popular option. I would absolutely pay more if more devs accepted crypto. Is it just a massive pain in the ass to work with crypto-coins?
Can devs share their experience with crypto?
- Thread starter dead_pixie
- Start date
We used crypto from the start and all of our supporters except for one (our single patreon supporter, kek) are by Monero. Granted we only started half a year ago so our following is tiny, but cryptocurrencies, torrents, and pirating websites like here are definitely the solutions to cancel culture. Using Monero is simpler than managing a regular credit card.
A lot of people don't seem to realize about 20-30% of what you donate to a dev goes to the payment processors. When you use something like Monero basically 100% goes to us, as the transaction fee is like a few pennies to a fraction of a penny. Bitcoin also has lower fees than payment processors, but there are certain times during the year when the transaction fees are crazy high due to volume of trading (to the point the fee can be half of your payment!) so I prefer dealing in Monero. So to reflect that, our Monero prices are cheaper than our Patreon. Crypto can be slow to send depending on how much activity is on the network, but I view it the same as sending someone a check or money order. It's not a big deal for online transactions. Fast transactions really only matter for in person trades (in which case you could use cash unless you are doing a big sale and you don't have armed security or something).
A week ago I made an XMRBazaar store.
The main reason no one uses crypto is because no one has had to use it. But as these bans become more frequent, I'm sure it will become more popular. Computers were considered very hard to understand just two decades ago, but today because it is so common use, even toddlers know how to use a computer/smartphone. I think the same is happening with crypto.
One issue is that cryptocurrency fluctuates in value. Monero is a lot more stable than other cryptocurrencies, but it does still change, and we are right now in the middle of a heavy price bubble because the economy is hot and people are investing money all over the place. However, as a consumer you can just use an exchange to buy the exact amount of any cryptocurrency with your credit card and then immediately pay the dev with that. This negates the issue of price fluctuations. All our crypto goes to our sexual content writer since she lives in a country that can't accept western payment platforms, but on her end she doesn't care about price changes because by just holding onto it the price naturally increases because our government issued currency like the dollar constantly goes down in value due to inflation from unchecked government spending. This is the same reason people tell you to buy gold/silver instead of storing all your money in a bank account, because unless you double your savings every 6 years, you are actually losing your money through the silent tax of inflation. Funny thing is, I have a lot of ammunition and my ammo actually went up in value nearly as much as my gold. I've actually made payments in person using ammo, which gives a real Metro 2033 vibe. That just shows how bad fiat currency is. As a side note, one of the reasons Satoshi made Bitcoin was to counter inflation, specifically the Obama admin's printing to bail out companies that donated to him. The way crypto coins are "made" is by miners who have to solve equations the blockchain provides. These are difficult problems and that's where the high energy cost to operate cryptocurrency comes from. However, this energy cost is basically the backing of crypto. No one will sell a coin for less than what it cost to create it, and the amount of coins produced (the payout to the miners) gets lower every time. This prevents inflation, while also ensuring you don't get rapid deflation (example some crypto whale having like 90% of the word supply then dying and no one can access his wallet). So when crypto price goes up and down, it's not really going "down" in value in the sense of losing value, but returning to a baseline. Think of it like a financial bubble, people are paying more than what it is worth due to short term demand. The only real way crypto can crash in value is if you buy a "shitcoin" or a cryptocurrency that is not decentralized and the production of coins is human controlled. This is why people don't like government issued coins like CBDC where they can produce as many coins as they want. While it makes sense for banks to have CBDC to do FOREX transactions more efficiently, it's not a good idea for someone who wants the funds detached from inflation, or someone who doesn't want the government to be able to block, freeze, or steal your money. Shameless plug, our game Crimson Veil slightly explores this concept as Monero and a form of CBDC are currencies the characters use in the story.
Cryptocurrency can be stolen from you, but the risk is low in the same way an account can be stolen if you leak your password. The password for a crypto account is known as a seed phrase, which consists of a series of random words. You don't get to pick what words they are, so to keep track of it you use a soft wallet (the Monero GUI you download from the official website) which holds your seed phrase and lets you access by setting a normal password. You also write it down somewhere on a piece of paper and you treat it like your Social Security number, you never give it out. If you think it is compromised, you just make a new wallet which has a new seed phrase and transfer your coins to the new wallet.
Now if you want to be truly secure, you can add Two Factor Authentication by using a cold wallet. Personally I use an old version of Ledger (
This highlights the mantra of all cryptocurrencies: not your keys, not your coins. Your balance is only as secure as your seed phrase. So you never leave coins on an exchange (the websites you buy crypto from), because that company can take your coins. The second it's transferred to your wallet, no one can touch those coins without the seed phrase.
You must be registered to see the links
. Text wall inbound.A lot of people don't seem to realize about 20-30% of what you donate to a dev goes to the payment processors. When you use something like Monero basically 100% goes to us, as the transaction fee is like a few pennies to a fraction of a penny. Bitcoin also has lower fees than payment processors, but there are certain times during the year when the transaction fees are crazy high due to volume of trading (to the point the fee can be half of your payment!) so I prefer dealing in Monero. So to reflect that, our Monero prices are cheaper than our Patreon. Crypto can be slow to send depending on how much activity is on the network, but I view it the same as sending someone a check or money order. It's not a big deal for online transactions. Fast transactions really only matter for in person trades (in which case you could use cash unless you are doing a big sale and you don't have armed security or something).
A week ago I made an XMRBazaar store.
You must be registered to see the links
While people usually email us directly to donate, I intend the store to be a front that allows people to view prices in case Subscribe Star or Patreon nukes us. The nice thing about XMRBazaar is they don't charge any fees, and people can sign up without giving any information, not even an email address. Our plan is eventually to sell physical merchandise once we get a real following (we have a nendoroid of one of our characters made up in CAD by a supporter), since a lot of our supporters have donated for months and I feel like they aren't really getting their money's worth in terms of volume of content even though I'm working as fast as I can. So when that happens, the store will also make it easy to view pictures of what the figure and packaging looks like. The main reason no one uses crypto is because no one has had to use it. But as these bans become more frequent, I'm sure it will become more popular. Computers were considered very hard to understand just two decades ago, but today because it is so common use, even toddlers know how to use a computer/smartphone. I think the same is happening with crypto.
One issue is that cryptocurrency fluctuates in value. Monero is a lot more stable than other cryptocurrencies, but it does still change, and we are right now in the middle of a heavy price bubble because the economy is hot and people are investing money all over the place. However, as a consumer you can just use an exchange to buy the exact amount of any cryptocurrency with your credit card and then immediately pay the dev with that. This negates the issue of price fluctuations. All our crypto goes to our sexual content writer since she lives in a country that can't accept western payment platforms, but on her end she doesn't care about price changes because by just holding onto it the price naturally increases because our government issued currency like the dollar constantly goes down in value due to inflation from unchecked government spending. This is the same reason people tell you to buy gold/silver instead of storing all your money in a bank account, because unless you double your savings every 6 years, you are actually losing your money through the silent tax of inflation. Funny thing is, I have a lot of ammunition and my ammo actually went up in value nearly as much as my gold. I've actually made payments in person using ammo, which gives a real Metro 2033 vibe. That just shows how bad fiat currency is. As a side note, one of the reasons Satoshi made Bitcoin was to counter inflation, specifically the Obama admin's printing to bail out companies that donated to him. The way crypto coins are "made" is by miners who have to solve equations the blockchain provides. These are difficult problems and that's where the high energy cost to operate cryptocurrency comes from. However, this energy cost is basically the backing of crypto. No one will sell a coin for less than what it cost to create it, and the amount of coins produced (the payout to the miners) gets lower every time. This prevents inflation, while also ensuring you don't get rapid deflation (example some crypto whale having like 90% of the word supply then dying and no one can access his wallet). So when crypto price goes up and down, it's not really going "down" in value in the sense of losing value, but returning to a baseline. Think of it like a financial bubble, people are paying more than what it is worth due to short term demand. The only real way crypto can crash in value is if you buy a "shitcoin" or a cryptocurrency that is not decentralized and the production of coins is human controlled. This is why people don't like government issued coins like CBDC where they can produce as many coins as they want. While it makes sense for banks to have CBDC to do FOREX transactions more efficiently, it's not a good idea for someone who wants the funds detached from inflation, or someone who doesn't want the government to be able to block, freeze, or steal your money. Shameless plug, our game Crimson Veil slightly explores this concept as Monero and a form of CBDC are currencies the characters use in the story.
Cryptocurrency can be stolen from you, but the risk is low in the same way an account can be stolen if you leak your password. The password for a crypto account is known as a seed phrase, which consists of a series of random words. You don't get to pick what words they are, so to keep track of it you use a soft wallet (the Monero GUI you download from the official website) which holds your seed phrase and lets you access by setting a normal password. You also write it down somewhere on a piece of paper and you treat it like your Social Security number, you never give it out. If you think it is compromised, you just make a new wallet which has a new seed phrase and transfer your coins to the new wallet.
Now if you want to be truly secure, you can add Two Factor Authentication by using a cold wallet. Personally I use an old version of Ledger (
You must be registered to see the links
). It looks like a thumb drive and this is what holds your seed, not the soft wallet on your computer. To send money you have to plug the cold wallet into the computer and enter a PIN on the cold wallet. This makes it so a remote hacker cannot access your coins. The seed phrase can never be extracted from the cold wallet because the circuitry is so basic, malware cannot physically interact with the cold wallet. You must buy a cold wallet direct from the manufacturer because theoretically someone could take apart a cold wallet and insert the necessary hardware to put malware on it. If the cold wallet is lost or breaks, your coins are not lost, you can regain access to your wallet with the seed phrase you wrote down. This is because coins are not "stored" on any of your devices. All crypto currency is, is a receipt (what is called a blockchain, which is much like a video game inventory system) which says how much money each account has. Then when you want to spend it, you use your seed phrase to gain access to order the block chain to transfer X amount to Y account. What keeps the block chain from being hacked is that every user can have a copy of it. So if one rogue individual manipulates it to add money to his account, his order to send money will always be rejected if it doesn't match the blockchain of everyone else. In Monero unlike Bitcoin, the blockchain is also not readable. With bitcoin if I have someone's address (what they post to receive coins), I can see every single transaction they have ever done. With Monero I can't. This really only matters if you want to keep secret how much you have and who you do business with. There are companies like Chainalysis who is trying to track Monero, but so far they haven't been able to. The IRS has a bounty of like a half million dollars if you can track a Monero transaction and no one has been able to do it.This highlights the mantra of all cryptocurrencies: not your keys, not your coins. Your balance is only as secure as your seed phrase. So you never leave coins on an exchange (the websites you buy crypto from), because that company can take your coins. The second it's transferred to your wallet, no one can touch those coins without the seed phrase.
