I mean what I say in the title. To me personally Optimism is worthless. Now that doesn't mean I think the Layer2 solution is garbage and has no purpose. What is means is that for the type of crypto person that I am, it has zero worth to me. Because of that I am going to attempt to swap it to something that I can use.
In the past I have used KUCOIN because it was the only exchange that didn't require KYC for us Americans to swap tokens around. I used it primarily for PUBLISH0X withdrawals to be honest and it worked perfectly. However I have been off my Publish0x game for a while and amassed a little nest egg of Optimism. So my adventure begins on swapping out $OP for either BTC or ETH (to HODL) or WAX to use.
My obvious first choice is Kucoin once again. (Spoiler, the reason I am writing this article is because I already tried this)
You see that little banner up top? Yup, KuCoin doesn't do business in the US of A anymore. And honestly I am surprised it didn't happen sooner. America is not known for being super non KYC crypto friendly. With Kucoin off the table it was time to find another solution.
The next place I thought of was Uniswap.
And that's a non-starter as well.
Alcor Exchange?
Just kidding I knew that wouldn't work :)
Next one to try is PancakeSwap. I am quite literally going down my bookmark folder called "Crypto Exchanges" and trying everyone.
Oh would you look at that! Optimism is an option. However this doesn't give me strong vibes that I will be able to swap to ETH, BTC or WAX.
Next 'Exchange/Swap' to check is ChangeAngel because I have used them in the past.
Good news is that Optimism is supported but Bad News is that OP to BTC is not.
Ethereum is an option but the only WAX option is WAXE and yeah that is not happening. So if I wanted to swap to ETH this could be an option.
The last option I can think of is StealthEX. I know of this one because I have used it before as well.
And would you look at that. They have WAXP as an option.
However my Publish0x $OP is still sitting in Publish0x. So I need to withdraw it. What I ended up deciding was to withdraw to my LEDGER wallet. I know I know, there is METAMASK and its recommended by Publish0x to withdraw too. But if I can be real for a second... I don't really trust MetaMask. I much more trust my Cold Wallet.
So I added my address and started my withdrawal.
And now we have to wait until next Monday to receive the funds and then I decide between swapping on StealthEx for WAX or ChangeAngel for ETH.
Be sure to come back next week to see if I can actually swap it :)
