A few days back I posted here about the inability to use Steem for payment of bills using livingroomofsatoshi.com
Update
I've since received some more information from their support. There is currently no ETA for the resumption of Steem transactions on LROS. I asked whether the temporary withdrawal of Steem support had anything to do with the prices rises of late (and this was asked before yesterday's Steem spike) and was told that it's an unrelated issue.
Just to be sure (and in a desire to see how much more powerful my Steem is since the last time I tried) I had one more crack this morning and sure enough, it's still disabled. To recap, here's the amount of Steem that would have been required to pay my bill 4 days ago (32.45) as pictured below (please excuse the dimensions as it was a screen shot taken on my phone).
... and here's my attempt this morning which would have required 18.25 Steem ...
Blocktrades
An alternative of course is to use an alternative coin. This requires a conversion from Steem. Interestingly, I've never actually sold any Steem since I started with Steemit. Sure there have been transfers to other users to and fro but I've never used it for any utility. Why not now when the price is high? So I went over to https://blocktrades.us and selected Litecoin as it's fairly cheap to transact in and is fast.
The UI is very easy to use as you can see pictured above. I like blocktrades. I decided to use my KeepKey as a LTC wallet intermediary to hold the converted Steem prior to paying @roomofsatoshi. I generated an LTC address on the hardware wallet as pictured.
... and away we go with blocktrades. Note the helpful information regarding fees.
Here I am sending the steem for the conversion...
... which was processed by blocktrades nearly instantly and arrived in my KeepKey wallet within 2 minutes.
Now came the simple step of sending that LTC from my wallet to LROS. It's easy to select a new coin on the LROS payment screen as pictured.
Selecting to send LTC from the KeepKey wallet produced the following. Note the convenient tip on the fee. I didn't increase the send amount by the fee. KeepKey does that for you as we'll see subsequently.
Through the beauty that is hardware wallets, I was prompted to confirm the transaction on the device itself and confirm that the transaction fee is to be added to the amount sent. I really liked this as it means I don't need to fret about whether I should have manually added the fee amount to the amount being sent...
... and in the time it took me to alt-tab over to my browser, this happened ...
I opted to email myself a receipt and all is done. A very smooth process. It would have been more convenient to directly use Steem but this is a way around it. All in all, I'm very happy and I'll let you all know if I hear anything more. Thanks guys!
You are processing at a crypto level light years ahead of me, but maybe 2018 is my year to catch-up slightly... what a start we are off too! Peace (-:
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It's been bonkers hasn't it @clumsysilverdad. I reckon there's always someone who seems to be so much more knowledgeable on crypto than oneself. I think with exposure you'll pick it up well 😊 Many are calling 2018 as the year crypto goes mainstream. Thanks for reading and for all your support!
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If things continue like this, it will be mainstream by February (-:
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Great time for you to be on board then! Happy to help where I can.
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really really interesting @nolnocluap ! I didnt even know Blocktrade...thanks for sharing mate!
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My pleasure @albertoyago, makes it all worth while to me to see someone benefit like you have. I hope it's a useful tool for you in the future 😊
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It's really quite frustrating that LROS is not doing Steem currently. And from the look of all the extra steps needed in here, I've got a bit of a learning curve to do my next withdrawal. Though given I was going to pull some out a couple of days ago, I'm doing pretty well thanks to the doubling and then some of Steem in that time!
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Steem has performed stunningly! That's why I was using it for bills. The complexity here is partly due to all my screen shots, many of which were just plain old wallet related. Would it help I wonder if my next bill payment I wrote up too using a different wallet to make the process clearer? In fact, the wallet step could even be skipped and LROS could receive the conversion directly. Thanks @ratticus!
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The wallet is the bit I need to figure out. I was hoping to just be able to do a direct payment to LROS, but doesn't look like they'll be getting that payment back up any time soon.
So I gather that keepkey is a physical wallet, but presumably you can get an online one too? What are your thoughts on the best wallets?
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Hey @minismallholding. It serves me right for posting so early in the morning. It occurred to me later that I could have probably skipped the whole wallet step entirely and used the LROS address as the output address for Blocktrades.
My next bill payment I may do again in a post and try to make it a bit easier... see if that works out better.
Yeah the KeepKey is a physical (hardware) wallet. I spent some time researching options when I bought mine. I did an unboxing video on the KeepKey, along with some research and an intro to crypto etc. If you're interested in that sort of stuff, my wallet journey is all public.
I also have been using the Jaxx wallet for quite a while. It's online and also available as a mobile app. You trade security for convenience in this case. Hope this helps!
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I woke up this morning and it suddenly slotted into place how you might circumvent the wallet! Thanks for confirming that!
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Pleasure!
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More write ups of the various processes to extract steem into cash are always useful
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Always great to have options and people that write tutorials about them :D I would still much rather they just fix it though XD
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Would be interesting to know the reason for the suspension@ryivhmm at least I agree. Was saying to @ratticus that I could do another version of this writeup where I may be able to skip a few steps and make it easier for folks. Thanks for the comment!
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I'd like to hear your experience using Blocktrade and payment using the platform. How user friendly is it?
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It went very well. Clear instructions and very snappy.
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Thanks for the reply!
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I've always found blocktrades very user friendly.
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As have I 👍
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Ohh man. LOS brought STEEM back end of Dec since then it's been off the list.
God bless blocktrades I say.
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