There is a lot of chatter at the moment about alts over-taking bitcoin, but of course that won't happen unless people actually find uses for alts. So I thought I'd start this thread to explore which alts people use in real life.
I'll start: I use doge to move coins from exchange to exchange. Typically I trade alts on Poloniex, and then at the end of the day I buy doge, send the doge to kraken where I place a sell order at a price slightly above my purchase price to cover fees , and when it sells I sell my bitcoin for euros and withdraw to my bank account.
The main reason I do this is because the fees are so low - it costs about 2doge (100 satoshis) to transfer doge. If you are moving coins daily, then the fees add up. Here is an example: to move bitcoin on a daily basis you need to pay at least 0.0002BTC (20,000 satoshis). If you do this every day, at the end of the year you will have spent 0.073 BTC (7,300,000 satoshis). Moving doge every day at a cost of 2 doge a day, adds up to 0.000365 BTC a year (36,500 satoshis).
That is a saving of 0.072635BTC and at a price of $450 a bitcoin, this is a saving of $32. Obviously if you are making several transactions a day, the saving is even more.
The other reason is the fast confirmation times for doge. The coins arrive and have six confirmations within ten minutes. Which means there are no delays waiting for miners to pick up your transaction.
If you use an alt, please post in the replies which alt you use and why you use it.
Your use of DOGE may be short sighted if you look at the volatility and spread. Sure you may save $32 in transfer fees, but you will lose your shirt in spread / volatility.
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BitShares is probably the one "altcoin" (if we're going to call it an altcoin) I've used regularly. I don't really consider BitShares an altcoin myself because to me personally "altcoin" is the same as saying "shitcoin" or "clone" or "fork of ...".
BitShares stands on it's own, much like Bitcoin and Ethereum. I'm fairly certain that I've used BitShares more than any other crypto I own to date, even more than Bitcoin. For large purchases however, Bitcoin is my go to. But that has more to do with the person on the other end of the transaction.
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How do you actually use bitshares? Do you use it to buy stuff? Or to hedge against bitcoin?
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Buy, sell, donate/gift, hedge, gamble. I've done a little of everything with BitShares. The wallet is superior to anything else out there which makes it a lot simpler and less worrisome to use in bulk.
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I only invest in cryptocurrencies that solve some real-world problems. I don't consider sending from one wallet to another as use. Spending on some service is a use, and thus only cryptos that are accepted somewhere or else provide some spectacular on-blockchain service are of any relevance. That said, STEEM and BTS are the only ones I use, because they are needed for participating here and trading on the bitshares DEX.
I'm not even sure if there are any other coins that can be used yet. Ok there is NXT, which has messaging and the exchange, Counterparty DEX but bitshares is better than both of them combined so I don't see much potential in them.
At the moment STEEM is the ultimate leader in real-world utility.
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Moving money is a kind of use - it is like foreign exchange. Essentially I want to convert my alt earnings into euros in my bank account and am using doge to move the money. It is no different to someone in say Argentina wishing to buy stuff in the United States and converting pesos to dollars first, before they can make their purchase. If the conversion facilitates the purchase, it has a use.
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I get your point, and you are absolutely right. I was just looking from a little different angle. I think that if an altcoin's only practical use is teleporting some other currency, it won't last very long. But I have never really got what the whole dogecoin is all about, so I lack perspective. I am too philosophic. I have no idea what the "doge" meme was/is and I don't even actually know what a meme is. Sorry.
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The remittance market was worth $436bn in 2014, so teleporting money is a thing!
I only use doge because it is fairly liquid (you don't have to wait long for orders to execute) and because the fees are low. If there was another coin that worked better I'd use that. The meme isn't important (though it created a very friendly community).
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Really believe that coins focusing on privacy and better anonymity than bitcoin can have a great future. That's why I'm using Dash and Monero. Mainly for testing purpose. But, more an more it is possible to buy real stuffs/services with those cryptos.
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A coin I think I would use in 'real life' is Geocoin
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