A few days ago @revise.leo challenged me to talk about 5 coins which you can 'use' apart from HIVE & Bitcoin.
Today I'm bringing up a few of those selected coins. Need to say that in fact, this is somewhat difficult, because 99% of the market use cases are 'speculation/staking-only' and actually I prefer to talk about things that I actually use/see value.
In this post, (and after giving it a few hard thoughts) I won't talk about 'pumpamentals', DEFI or partnerships (edit: try to!), I'll only talk about 'what you can actually do with this coin rather than speculate'.
I'm bringing up 3 coins which I'm CURRENTLY using.
Why not 5? Because I prefer to keep the list short as your attention as a reader is a valuable resource and I don't want to spread it between half a dozen coins.
2 Of those coins are pretty straightforward, the other one is almost 'crossing the line of the speculation', but it gives me a point to talk about something underrated in the crypto space; hedging & protection.
Okay, I'm already talking too much. Let's go with the theme of the post.
#1 Usecase: Payments & Purchases - Swipe Token ($SXP)
It's Easy. You lock up SXP tokens --> You start saving massively in your day to day purchases.
Swipe is a company who offers a debit card which you can fund with your crypto holdings and pay for for your everyday expenses.
You basically lock up your coins for 6 months in their wallet in a tiered system and they send your card in 1-2 weeks.
The advantages for doing such a thing are massive, let's check it out what you can receive in their 'middle' level which requires staking 300 SXP for 6 months (~240$ at the time of writing):
To summarize;
- Free Spotify (worth 6,99€/month)
- Free Netflix (worth 7,99€/month)
- Free Amazon Prime (worth 3,99€/month)
And the best; 2% Cash Back on all purchases paid in BITCOIN!
Maybe it doesn't sound like a very 'good deal', because only the memberships of that programs don't justify the price IMHO (in fact I'm very used to their free versions and I can share 1 Netflix account with 2-3 friends), but for a lot of people this is an expense which they're dealing with anyway.
After all, we're talking about a bit more than ~15€/month which adds up to ~180€/year. If you're already using these services the membership pays by itself.
The juicy thing is the 2% cashback.
Let's say that you usually spend 500€/month on day-to-day expenses;
250€ in food
150€ in fuel
100€ in leisure/miscellaneous
500€/month in expenses adds up to 10€ in cashback. The 'coolest' part of this is that we're talking about money that you would have spent anyway. How cool is that?
You're also receiving your cashback in Bitcoin, which given enough time, it will increase in value vs fiat. I've been experiencing this lately, and it feels awesome.
Also, bear in mind that the 300 SXP tokens are still yours, so technically this card isn't a 'paid membership'.
Swipe also has a referral program, If you don't mind and you're interested use the code 'KDK77P' when you register into the Swipe app.
#2 Usecase: Travel & Leisure - Travala Token $AVA
Travala and their Smart program have been one of my all-time favourites crypto use-case. Similar to Swipe, the premise is easy; lock AVA tokens and enjoy cheaper travelling.
In that case, the lock-up period is fairly small (30 days); and as long as you keep your coins locked in their tiered system you'll be receiving the following advantages:
- Up to 5% discount for selected bookings (applied directly).
- Up to 5% giveback/cashback on selected bookings.
- Staking rewards of 24% APY of your locked AVA amount.
Just for clarification, mention that this 'up to' is because of the tiered system, you can lock a minimum of 500 AVA (360$ at time of writing) and a maximum of 5000 AVA (3600$).
I'm enjoying the highest level which basically means that I'm receiving around ~72$/month in staking rewards (half paid in AVA, the other half in travel credits which are spendable only on the platform).
Being AVA a pretty scarce token which increased a lot in value this year, I start to experience things like this one:
Back in March (prior to all the lockdowns) I received a giveback of 22,5 AVA for a hotel night worth 70€ at the time.
Now this 22,5 AVA are worth 16,2€ which equals to ~23% of the booking value back at the time(not counting other discounts that I enjoyed back at the time). Not a bad deal right?
I encourage everyone to try Travala vs Booking/Agoda. The savings are serious.
If you dare to try, use my reflink and if you manage to make a booking worth ~180€ or more, we'll receive both 23€. Let me know if you do and I'll be sharing a fat LEO upvote with you :)
#3 Usecase: Crypto Index + Hedge - Base Protocol $BASE
I know that @revise.leo won't approve this as a 'usecase' but I'm sharing it anyway because I find the idea pretty interesting (the token is a pump&dump at the moment of only 11 days old, so please, caution because this is high risk).
(I know, I know... I shouldn't' be touching these things... but try to understand my point, get a joint or something)
At their essence, the $BASE token is a synthetic token with a rebasing mechanism (remember Ampleforth $AMPL?). That means that their SUPPLY contracts/expand every day depending on another factor.
And that 'other factor' is the 'total market cap' of all the cryptocurrencies at a 1:1 trillion ratio.
That means, that if now the total market cap of the entire market is 532 Billion, the 'peg' price for $BASE will be 0,532$
If the price is higher, the supply will expand and will be equally shared between all the holders. This artificially created supply 'should' force the price to return back to the peg.
If the price is lower, the supply will contract and all the holders will see their BASE holdings decrease ('Who stole my coins?'). This artificially created scarcity 'should' force the price to return back up to the peg.
Even if it seems like a Degenerate DEFI thing at first sight ( in fact it is). Try to imagine the following use-case/experiment:
If the price of the token is forced to follow the total market cap of the entire market, that means that in an 'ideal world' this should act as a 'Crypto Index', benefiting from all the growth of the market.
My instant thought while researching this was:
If I get some $BASE and I put it with $ETH in a Uniswap Pool, I'm being exposed to all the market at once (+ getting fees). Where is the 'staking program for this shit?
Which brought to me the following thought:
What If we (everyone) received our fair share of inflation... every time the printer goes 'brrrrr'¿?
Then the crypto space wouldn't be necessary, because we would be already living in an 'ideal world'.
But I'm here because I have 0 trust in the legacy system...
and this doesn't look like it's going to change anytime soon.
And for that reason, I'm bullish on Bitcoin, Ethereum, all the things that cut middlemen services offered by banks, like what's trying to do the DeFi industry.
we need to keep trying things like BASE Protocol (but I'm thinking more about Bitcoin there) because it's our hedge Vs. the legacy System.
I have distorted a little the theme of the post at the end, sorry.
We have two valid use-cases and a half, then? I'll talk another day about more shitcoins. Maybe next week..
Thanks for reading and enjoy your weekend.
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