Blockchain truly gives us the opportunity to earn money from our skills and writings. Not only that, but we also get to either invest our earnings—like staking on Hive—or spend them on our daily needs.
Lastweek, I went out to buy a guitar strings and saw more thing i needed but realized I was out of cash. The only convertible asset I had was my Hive. I checked my Hive wallet and saw I had about 100 raw Hive. At first, I thought converting it to cash would be straightforward, but I was reminded of how lengthy the process can be.
This reminded me of another time when I tried to order food with a friend. Instead of using the cash I had, I decided to pay with Hive. The process involved:
- Transferring from my Hive wallet to Binance
- Moving it from Binance to Bybit
- Converting it via P2P
- Sending it to my Opay wallet
This chain of transactions took over 30 minutes due to network issues then. But when I tried last week it took about 20 minutes, but I still wish the process could be faster and simpler.
Despite the hurdles, I went ahead to purchase a guitar bag for ₦10,000—a great deal I didn’t want to miss. I transferred 100 Hive (worth about $27 at the current rate of ~$0.25 per Hive), which converted to roughly ₦48,000. After buying the bag and a ₦300 data plan, I spent ₦10,300 in total.
The seller just had to wait for me to get my cash and transfer to them althought it was awkward as they waited.
This experience made me realize how dependent I was on this multi-step process. What if something went wrong during the transfers? It made me wish for a smoother way for Nigerians to spend Hive directly, making it more widely accepted.
More so, could it also be a deterrent for people not to use up their hive and instead build up their portfolio.
I already knew now was not a good time to be using up hive, my raw hive was initslly meant for re-investing incase hive goes up for HBD, but then the need came up and i saw a good opportunity.
I hope that someday, Hive becomes more accessible for everyday transactions, reducing the need for lengthy conversions. Until then, I am encouraged to stake up hive and more powered up.
Have you ever used crypto for daily spending?
Share your experiences.
