Today I spent over 10 hours trying to book a flight using cryptocurrency as a payment option but ended up giving up and using my card. It was frustrating as I just wanted to do a quick swap from my cryptocurrency to next cryptocurrency that was available option for payment. I wasn't to impress with the fees I was being charge from exchanges and to the likes of Exodus, Shapeshift and Changelly just wasn't cutting it for me. I even contacted a few friends asking them if they are interested is swapping some cryptocurreny so that I can make the payment but everyone seem like they were willing to offer more expensive rate than the exchanges. Why pay over 10 dollars in total fees from one cryptocurrency to next the next to make a payment that only cost USD 158.95. While some may point out that it really not that much just pay it, I tend to count every dollar. The end result wasn't favorable, I ended up paying USD 207.50 with my Debit card as the price of the ticket went up during that time period. Then I wondered to myself how much people are going through this, and the commerce that was lost as an result.

Its great to see prices rise and all the meme's that come with it but I wonder during that moment how much this kind of frustration is costing broad scale adoption of cryptocurrency. I have long concluded that Bitcoin offers the best security but if we can't bring the cost of using the network down from fees to the service providers we are retiring the network to a store of value tool and not a medium of exchange. Or it could simply be a case of me being to 'cheap' but when it comes down to me capitulating to using my Debit card I felt disappointed.

One of the things I can say within the cryptocurrency space given that we embrace open-source project is that we build more service without the need to make a killing in the process. The narrative has always been cutting off the middleman but it seems that cryptocurrency middlemen go unnoticed. Probably more of us should be asking the question what can we do for cryptocurrency to move it forward rather than how much money I can make by providing that service. Lets think about it.

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