Although all accepted currencies were represented, since most people didn’t have wallets previously, the majority of value was sent over the xDai network.

Amount spent by currency

Comparison of performance and fees

Payment settlement time and transaction fees are a vital concern when deciding which payment solution to use. Among the payments we accepted, Bitcoin was an outlier with its transaction times. This is to be expected however, block times are ~10 minutes for Bitcoin. This is something where the Lightning Network has potential to shine.

Bitcoin transaction times are a drag

Litecoin and xDai outperformed Bitcoin and Ethereum again for transaction fees. Litecoin cost an average of $0.000664666 and xDai $0.0000231. That is to say that you can send 15 Litecoin or 432 xDai transactions for just a penny.

The most telling piece comes when you compare any of these methods to credit cards. Using something like Square, you can expect 24–72 hours for your payments to clear to your bank account, and on a $6.50 beer you will pay $0.49.

That makes credit cards 17280 times slower and 21212 times more expensive than the xDai network.

Looking Forward

The meetup was a blast, a glimpse into the future and an encouragement that we are closer than people realize possible mainstream adoption. The most noteworthy part of this experiment was not that crypto was faster, cheaper or more trustless than things like Venmo, but rather that it was actually just easier to use and quicker to onboard users to.

This is the critical test for mainstream adoption. Most people don’t care about the bits, bytes and Bitcoins of how their payments get processed. They just want less bullshit in their way.

There is still a very long way to go however. The tech is still very much alpha software. Comically, for some users the wallet pulled up the selfie camera for scanning QR codes.

Quite the challenge scanning QR codes with the front facing camera — Photo by Dan Shields

As for ubiquity, we need to get crypto in more people’s hands, and give them more options for things to spend it on. Of the 22 new people on-boarded to the Burner Wallet, only 1 has since used it.

Challenges aside, I’m extremely excited about 2019. I think this is the year that we break through with meaningfully useful applications.

Shoutouts

The Colorado Blockchain community is awesome. I’m extremely glad to be able to be a part of it. Huge props to: