Minh Tran is 27 and works as a backend developer in Ho Chi Minh City. His clients are mostly in the US and Europe. They pay him in USDT and he keeps it that way.
MT
Minh Tran, 27
Backend developer · Ho Chi Minh City · Vietnam
Minh has a bank account. A VietcomBank account his parents helped him open when he was eighteen. He still has it. The balance rarely changes.
He works remotely for a software agency in Berlin and picks up freelance contracts on the side, mostly from clients in the US. All of them pay in USDT. About two years ago, he stopped converting it to dong. The conversion had started to feel like an unnecessary step.
His phone, internet, dev tools and food delivery. A growing share of what he spends money on can come directly from that USDT balance. Rent and the occasional in-person purchase still go through the bank. But those are the exceptions now, not the rule.
Started invoicing in USDT
His first international client asked how he wanted to be paid. He said USDT after seeing others in his network do the same. No wire fees, no delays, payment arrives the same day it's sent.
Converted everything at first
For the first few months he moved most of it to dong out of habit. His expenses were in dong so it seemed sensible. But the conversion cost something each time and the rate was never great.
Moved his tools first
GitHub, cloud hosting, domain renewals are all billed in dollars. Paying them directly from USDT removed one step. He stopped thinking about exchange rates for those purchases.
Phone and internet followed
He tops up his Vietnamobile balance through Cryptorefills. Works every time. His family's numbers stay topped up from the same balance, without anyone needing to move money around first.
MoMo for local spending
Grab rides, local food orders, splitting bills with friends. He loads MoMo with a gift card bought in USDT. That covers the parts of daily life in Ho Chi Minh City that still run on local payment rails.
Travel sorted the same way
He travels for work a few times a year. Flights booked on Cryptorefills, eSIM activated before landing. He hasn't needed a currency exchange counter in over a year.
Rent and cash are the two things keeping the bank account alive. Most everything else moved out of it gradually, without any deliberate plan to do so.
Where Minh's USDT spending goes
Rough breakdown: dev tools first, local spending bridged through MoMo
Dev tools and SaaS34%
Mobile top up20%
MoMo18%
Travel and eSIM16%
Streaming and games12%
What makes Minh's setup unusual is how complete it is. He earns in USDT, keeps most of it in USDT, and spends it directly. The MoMo bridge handles the parts of daily life in Ho Chi Minh City that local payment rails cover better. The bank account handles rent. And that's about it.
Crypto vs bank: monthly spending split
Most of his spending runs directly from USDT. The bank handles what crypto can't reach yet.
Crypto ~70%
Bank / cash ~30%
Rent and in-person cash are the main reasons the bank account still exists.
~70%
of monthly spending from USDT
0
wire transfers in the past year
1
bank account, rarely opened
He doesn't have a strong view on any of this. USDT works for most of what he needs. Where it doesn't, the bank fills in. He didn't set out to minimise his bank usage, but just stopped converting money he didn't need to convert, and the bank account use dropped naturally from there.
Most months VietcomBank sends him a notification about some offer. He clears the notification and goes back to work.
Minh didn't plan to end up here. He just kept removing steps that didn't need to be there. Two years of small adjustments and the bank account went from essential to a fallback he rarely thinks about.
