Skepticism Sauce for Bitcoin Burgers

Over the past two days, two pieces of news have come out that have been widely circulated by the crypto community with great enthusiasm:

➡️Trump paid for burgers 🍔 with Bitcoin.
➡️The state of Louisiana has begun accepting cryptocurrencies as a means of payment for government services.

This all looks encouraging, but let's look at both pieces of news objectively.

1️⃣Paying for burgers looked pretty awkward. Basically, we were shown that a regular card or cash is much more convenient. Trump didn't understand what to do at all and handed the phone to the "specialists" to make the payment for him. They also couldn't make the transaction right away, trying for a long time to scan the QR code (and both the phone and the terminal were prepared in advance). Then they couldn't figure out if the transaction went through. You can say that there are problems with cards too - the terminal froze or the Internet went down. However, in this case, all these problems remain, only they are supplemented with the hassle of a not very developed front office system for crypto payments and possible problems with the blockchain (like an overloaded network). Finding a reasonable reason to pay with cryptocurrency when there are regular payment methods is quite difficult.

2️⃣The news about the state of Louisiana is also far-fetched. If you read the release itself, it becomes clear that they actually accept money in fiat. It's just that the site now has a built-in exchanger that converts your cryptocurrency (BTC or USDC) into US dollars. This is the same as statements like "Ferrari began accepting payments in cryptocurrencies" and other loud headlines. Everyone accepts payment in fiat, they just take on the conversion process through third-party contractors. Moreover, you do not know in advance what the rate and exchange conditions will be. Given the high volatility of Bitcoin, this is a very important point. When dealing with large amounts (for example, buying a Ferrari), it is much wiser to convert cryptocurrency through an exchange at a favorable rate and withdraw money into fiat yourself. In addition, all "cryptocurrency purchases" from official companies or the state will be recorded by financial monitoring authorities, so there can be no talk of any privacy. Moreover, the wallets from which payments are made will lose their anonymity (if they were anonymous) and will subsequently be linked to the identity of the buyer.

Nevertheless, the cryptocurrency market lives on hype. And both news items look positive in terms of the impact of headlines on the average person 💚. Just don't get too excited - nothing epochal has happened.