Living in NY, I don't have access to Binance and Bittrex as centralized exchanges. This makes getting money to and from Hive a bit of a pain in the ass if I'm being frank! Today, I wanted to convert 1 LTC into HBD, Hive, and DEC. Honestly, I was not at all amused.
I'm going to start off with, as harsh as this might sound, there really isn't any single person or group to point the finger at. It's how things are. We have to think KISS... (Keep it simple stupid) As simple as the process is, it's no walk in the park.
First things first, I clicked the "Buy with Crypto" button in the Peakd wallet. This is the easy part.
Next, I selected Litecoin to convert to Hive.
At the time of this writing, 1 litecoin is worth about 281 Hive. I wait for the transaction to confirm.
I waited for Litecoin to confirm. Once confirmed SimpleSwap puts the crypto directly into your wallet.
This part was simple. Now that I have my 281 Hive I can begin to convert. I use LeoDex.
I click on the deposit button and select the amount of Hive to deposit. I'd love to see a way to deposit HBD directly. (At this point I actually bought Hive in exchange for LTC now I have to convert the Hive I bought back to HBD) Whatever... Am I missing something? Is there a way to transfer HBD directly to LeoDex or TribalDex? Considering it's our stablecoin, you'd actually think all DEX transactions would be in HBD instead of Hive. I'm sure it has something to do with the way the blockchain is set up, but I'd love to hear the reason if anyone has a moment to comment.
I transfer the Hive into LeoDex instantly converting it to swap.hive and begin making my transactions. I buy some DEC to transfer to a friend as a late Xmas gift and I then convert the rest to HBD for trading down the road.
This is when things got super screwy for me. After purchasing my HBD and DEC I decide to send the DEC to the person I wanted to gift. I select 70000 DEC and it looks like everything is fine. However, returning to my wallet I realize the DEC is still in my account. I hit refresh. Still have my DEC available. I try again, but still nothing.
I call my friend. "Check your account"
Friend: "Nope not there"
I wait several minutes and still nothing. I then try Tribal Dex. Same thing. OK... WTF
It doesn't look like the crypto is being sent. I tell my friend to look in her Splinterlands wallet and see what her balances are... "OH, there's 140,000 DEC in my Hive engine wallet."
I tell her to transfer it all to her game wallet and send me back 70K.
"It's asking for my HiveSigner password, I've never used that"
OK, my friend is a normie who loves Splinterlands. I set up her account for her. Now I have to spend the next hour or so getting her into HiveSigner.
My point to all this is that it shouldn't be this difficult. I say that about crypto in general, not as a shot at Hive or LeoDex. There are just too many steps to complete. Transfer LTC, convert to Hive, and convert Hive to swap,hive, then convert swap.hive to swap.hbd and DEC. Then transfer to account holders and into the game. So many points of failure.
To add insult to injury, my friend lost their HiveSigner password, and resetting that was a nightmare unto itself.
Don't even get me started on all the keys for a Hive account. Then add 4 or 5 different ways to log into your account. I hate to break it to everyone but this is a "normie" nightmare. Nobody wants to deal with all this, including me, and I'm a crypto bro! WTF
This is a huge factor in why we're not seeing mass adoption. What seems reasonable and simple to you and me is a "normies" worst nightmare. Again this isn't an indictment on Hive, all the other blockchains are pretty much the same with the exception of the 5 different keys necessary for Hive.
IDK, I'm kind of just ranting. I literally spent the early part of my afternoon transferring around $100 and what I thought would be a five-minute process, literally turned into an all-day affair. After several hours of screwing around with DEC transfers and HBD conversions, I'm a little pissed off that the day is almost over.
Someone said to me the other day, "Crypto has to pass the grandma test" This being, if Grandma can use it without a problem, then it's ready for the public. WE ALL (the crypto community in general) HAVE A LONG WAY TO GO!
In all fairness. This isn't the fault of LeoDex, TribalDex, Splinterlands, or Hive. It's an indictment on the entire industry. Until we come up with a simple way to handle our credentials and transfer around funds in real-time without having to fill out KYC/AML on every platform there is just no way we're going to see NORMAL people entering the space. Most people can't handle self-custody, keeping track of all their credentials, and using multiple platforms to move around their finances. If it's annoying to you as a crypto bro or broette, just imagine how much it's annoying a normie trying to enter the space.
Trust me... We're still early!