While cryptocurrency has been seen largely as an investment strategy since its meteoric rise into the public eye, there’s a whole community of people who are happy to use digital currency for everyday purchases.
That might seem like a weird and annoying concept, but various technologies have made the process as easy as any other normal transaction. There’s not a whole lot of physical places that accept the currencies, but there’s certainly ways around that if you’re determined.
If you’re one of those lucky folks who has a small fortune sitting in your account, but feel hesitant to move it around too much, the ability to access it easily is a huge help.
Here’s 5 things you can do with your crypto.
Pay your bills
That’s right, you can use your crypto stash to pay bills in a few very easy steps using a website called Paid By Coins.
Essentially, it lets users “pay any bills that have the BPAY logo and to any Australian bank account,” the FAQ reads. Unlike a lot of the options below which only accept Bitcoin, Paid By Coins will let you pay with Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin.
Better yet, there’s no transaction fees associated with the service, as the company makes money from the currency exchange rather than extra charges.
Flights and accomodation
In the market for a holiday? It’s starting to get pretty bloody cold here, so why not use some of that sweet crypto to book a flight to a warmer climate?
Sites like Expedia, Webjet, and CheapAir.com all accept Bitcoin payments for travel. In fact, the industry was one of the first to explore digital payments. Given its natural portability, borderless exchange, and security compared to traditional currencies, it makes sense for the travel market to embrace crypto payments.
Citizenship in Vanuatu
Yes, extremely weird, but in October 2017, Vanuatu began a pilot program that allows folks to purchase citizenship with Bitcoin.
The country has a “citizenship by investment” model, which isn’t exclusive to the island country, but it was the first to accept crypto as a means of payment.
If you were wondering what that’s worth, it’s about $US200,000 ($264,140), or roughly 27 BTC at the time of writing. Not cheap, eh?
A Tesla
Elon Musk‘s electric car company, Tesla, has been accepting Bitcoin for some time now. In fact, back in 2013, a Florida man bought a Tesla Model S P90D for 91.4 Bitcoins, which equated to $US103,000 at the time. That same amount of Bitcoin is worth $US674,990 ($891,517) at the time of writing.
Of course, it shouldn’t be that surprising that Musk was always happy to accept digital currency, even in the early days. The guy likes to think of himself as something of a trail blazer, you know?
Some retailers around you
Some bricks and mortar stores do in fact accept crypto, but finding who and where they are can be tricky. Luckily, there’s a website that’ll do the heavy lifting for you.
Coinmap will give you a heat map of the places that take digital currency around the world. To get more information, all you have to do is zoom in on your city until each outlet is numbered on the map.
Clicking on the numbers will present you with further details, but the easiest way to see everything is to click the options button at the bottom left, then select the middle column at the top. This will give you a list of retailers in the area.
So there you have it, folks. There’s a bunch of ways you can use your crypto without going through the rigmarole of exchanging it for traditional currency first. And hey, if you’re sitting on a small fortune, why not treat yourself?
