I've been a long-time admirer of Ethereum, it used to feel like the jack-of-all-trades crypto. Utilitarian and working class. Crypto for the masses. I also like Vitalik Buterin. He's a visionary with principles and the will to create a sustainable, alternative financial platform.

But for now at least. I'm done with Ethereum.

I use Crytpo. As I mentioned in my last post, I genuinely aim to use it as much as I can, every day, and one of the reasons that got me involved with this brave new world was the ability to quickly and cheaply make transactions, to anyone, any place at any time. The 'Martini' philosophy. I was sick of filling the pockets of Western Union and other transfer agents, creating paper trails of data to keep nosey governments fed with my every why and wherefore...

... I want to buy some pencils and drawing books and other little nik-naks for my friend's kids or help with school fees...

... you know, just little nice things for people you care about and it's MY business and no-one else's.

So I'm always looking to reduce fees and transfer costs, I also like to turn some crypto into USDT when prices rise so I can lock in the value and I thought, it would be easy to send that way as I try and make it as simple as possible for the receivers who can budget, knowing the exact amount they'd receive in USD rather than be victim to the vagrancies of Bitcoin.

But no...

So I wanted to send $50USD...fifty paltry US Dollars and this is what I got when I went to transfer from Binance into their wallet...

$24 USD to do a transfer. You have to be kidding me! The amount made no difference, this was the fee! Even shitty Tron was only a dollar!

So my two-part question to you informed and clever Crypto veterans is this...

WHY?

I mean seriously, who is getting the fees and why is it so high? and the second part of the question is of course; Why is anyone still using this ridiculous blockchain and paying huge sums for the privilege?

I thought I'd check out the number of daily transactions to see if the numbers were decreasing and...

Apart from earlier this year, which I guess was down to the Defi boom, daily transactions have remained fairly constant around 1.1million

source: www.ycharts.com

Someone somewhere has to be making a mint. I bet even Western friggin' Union are looking on with envy!

So, it's bye-bye Ethereum for me as I continue to find the simplest and cheapest way to get a few pencils and drawing books to friends on the other side of the planet which is the reason I came to crypto in the first place.

Vitalik, you are taking candy from babies. Literally!