Swapped my 0.05 BTC for BCH!
I used Bitpay. It was easy. That's the short story.
The long story is here: 250 microtransactions on a BTC address I used to use back in the day on sites like bitvisitor.com (circa 2012). That was one address. I had previously tried to use these millibitcoins only to find that just sending the transaction would cost more than the sum of the 250 transactions in this address. WTF?! It had been a few years since I had looked at bitcoin - the PC I used to use had a PSU failure right about the time where I didn't use it for work anymore (got a new job).
I remembered the price... around $8, and I was too chicken to buy it! I had a coinbase account. I was running a full node wallet. I was constantly searching faucets and other "earn bitcoin" websites trying to earn some bits! I just couldn't pull the trigger on the Credit Card... just a few weeks ago these things were only worth pennies... surely as soon as I buy some, the price will crash and I will have $0.08 worth of junk! Fast forward to 2017... "I wonder what bitcoin is doing," I thought to myself.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!WTF!?>???? @(*#$( $4000?!
And what are all of these other things? Ethereum? I had missed all of the drama, the shift to SegWit, the co-opting of the best thing since sliced bread. Litecoin was still around? Hmm. $4? Pass. I remember Adam Kokesh shiling for LTC "Litecoin is silver to Bitcoin's gold!" Man, that guy was great doing interviews... but dude, the name of the game is staying OUT of the joint! I digress!
Anyway, I swapped some of my old BTC for my 1st ETH! Holy hell, what are all these tokens flying around? Missed the VERI ICO by a few weeks, wow, should have been paying more attention! Gains measured in thousands of percent... wow, this is taking off!
Back to the BTC. I loaded up a transaction with all of my UTXO's from the bitvisitor days... the list was LONG... 43kB long... wow... to send this will cost me how much? $200 worth of bitcoin... was going to cost me $80 in fees... wow... guess I will just sit on this for a while... note to self: "stay away from bitcoin." The fees are unfathomable!
Checked in again around the peak in December - not even going to try to remember the tx cost... it was stupid. I started learning more about the evil Bcash fork. Segwit. The Lightning Network. The Whitepaper. My ETH txs were getting expensive... cryptokitties? AYFKM? WTF, someone is lying. Wait a minute... the only argument from the guys attacking BCH - BCASH - ROGER - Rhinos shitting everywhere... hmm! BULLSHIT, Segwit is crap, LN is even worse, what is this, XRP? The bankers' coin!
The fact is that you've got to pay attention! Don't get comfortable! Always always always re-evaluate what is going on, things change quickly in the cryptoverse!
So now (about a month ago) BTC fees have settled down (along with the number of txs - imagine that!) and I can send (sweep) this now $400 worth of bitcoin for $8! Yes! Broadcast transaction! Get me outta here! I'm on twitter reading about how all of these merchants adopting the real bitcoin. New apps being built. Excitement! Satoshi's Vision conference! This thing is forming a base... a breakout! Wish the volume was more substantial, but I'll take it! All while the punk in me says, this is it! P2P cash! No permission! No KYC! No BS! Tx for less than pennies! Now, just merge with ZENcash to bring in the privacy aspect of the network (encrypted traffic at the node level, private txs, node rewards, governance, etc.) and we can say goodnight to the rest of the crypto world.
Things are again moving in the right direction! Bitcoin FTW! Bitcoin cash that is, the REAL Bitcoin! Don't think so? Let me know WHY... and I mean a real reason with things like facts to backup your argument. :)