No CommentsBitcoin is constantly becoming a more useful way to use your funds, and Bitcoin’s future looks bright. Having all these great advantages, one could easily choose to use BTC over the regular fiat money. In the past, we focused on lists of specific businesses accepting Bitcoin, or restaurants that accept Bitcoin. However, with new companies accepting Bitcoin at an ever increasing rate, the ways of using your bitcoins are constantly growing. Today you can even buy a PC using only bitcoins. What else can you do with Bitcoin you might ask? Let me show you:
1. Bitcoin for Giftcards
The easiest way to use bitcoins in a store that doesn’t accept BTC yet is to buy a giftcard to that place. Have an awesome thing in mind that you want to buy, but realize you need to spend Bitcoin to buy it? Fear no more! Go ahead and get a giftcard to that very place. However depending on where you live, you should check how the giftcards work. There are sometimes limitations on where the cards can be used, especially if you live outside of the US. You don’t want to end up getting a giftcard that you can’t actually use.
You can buy gift cards with BTC from places such as Pock and Gyft.
2. Services that Accept Bitcoin
There are a lot of services, including VPN services, electronics and even travelling services that you can buy with Bitcoin. You can actually pay for a whole flight using only bitcoin through various services, such as Cheapair, which also accepts Dogecoin and Litecoin, or even Expedia. Choose where you will be flying to, when and all the other stuff you do when planning a flight. When you are done, you will be given a randomly generated wallet address where you will send the bitcoins and ten minutes time to send them.
Other services include Television, VPN services and even services that offer education for programming languages, such as Java, HTML & CSS, jQuery and so on. Recently, Dish began accepting bitcoin for it’s satellite TV and internet services, Treehouse is a great service to accept BTC for their educational services, and AirVPN is a great, and reliable, service that accepts bitcoins for its VPN services.
Beyond this, PayPal is slowly integrating Bitcoin into it’s various payment systems, and will likely provide full support for BTC in the near future.
3. Purchase Electronics with Bitcoin
Do you happen to have some extra bitcoin lurking around that you want to use? Maybe you want to get a new component for your current computer? Nowadays this is easy. The two major online electronic retailers, Newegg and TigerDirect, both accept BTC. On top of that, Dell has recently begun accepting Bitcoin, Overstock accepts Bitcoin, even if they are not exactly focused on electronics, and many other companies are either considering Bitcoin integration, or are actively working on getting started.
4. Day Trading with Bitcoin
With every currency or even an object, there’s always the option to trade. With bitcoin, there are various different places to trade. You can either trade straight to fiat money, or even to other cryptocurrencies by using a trading site, such as Coinbase, Cryptsy, Bitstamp, Cex or Bittrex. If you can’t come up with a thing to use BTC for, there’s always the option to make even more out of what you have right now. We have a Bitcoin day trading guide for those that would like to get started, and try their hand at being a trader. However, please be cautious. Trading, especially day trading, is a very difficult field to succeed in, and consistent success takes a combination of natural talent, a large amount of studying, and practice.
5. Direct Gambling with Bitcoin
If day trading doesn’t suit you, there’s always other means to increase your Bitcoin holdings. There are a large variety of gambling sites, and Satoshibet is one of the largest, as well as most reliable. I personally have a little experience using this site first hand. If Satoshibet is not for you, there are many, many other gambling websites and programs that are geared toward Bitcoin or other digital currencies. However, as with day trading, please be cautious. Gambling in this way is even more risky than day trading, as the luck factor is greatly increased, and you should never send your BTC to an unknown, untrusted website.
6. Bitcoin Mining Hardware…to Mine More BTC
Of course with Bitcoin, and most other cryptocurrency out there, the coins must first be mined before they can be used. The Bitcoin mining industry, together with altcoin mining, has experienced explosive growth over the past year and a half. While it experienced a period where it was unprofitable for the vast majority of users, profitable Bitcoin mining is beginning to become a reality once again, due to the fact that ASICs are finally reaching the state-of-art level. This should result in fewer leaps in efficiency, and thus the difficulty should start to level off, or even begin to follow the Bitcoin price (as it did in the past, when GPUs and FPGAs were the dominant force in mining).
To begin mining, one needs to obtain mining hardware. Mining hardware tends to be purchasable with BTC, of course, so this can lead to mining Bitcoin, using that Bitcoin to buy more mining gear, then mining even more Bitcoin, and so on…
Gawminers is a great and reliable place to obtain mining gear, both cloud and physical. Gawminers is also one of the cheapest, and most reliable, mining hardware companies available. On top of that, there are multiple Bitcoin cloud mining services, and many other physical hardware retailers. Just always remember to do your homework, and check the various Bitcoin forums, the Bitcoin mining subreddit, etc., to determine if a company is reliable and safe.
Many Other Merchants Accept BTC, or Are Considering Bitcoin
This is far from a comprehensive list, as the number of merchants that accept Bitcoin number in the thousands. In fact, this article is mostly focused on companies and services that are based in, and available, in the US or Europe. This is not even considering the growing number of merchants in Africa that accept Bitcoin. If there is a place I failed to mention, sites such as Spendbitcoins can provide more detailed lists, where you can see all the places that accept BTC as a way of payment. Merchant adoption is constantly increasing, and that is a very good thing.
However, Bitcoin’s future depends on consumers adopting the currency as well. By showing people how many different places they can spend bitcoins, it may encourage them to get involved, or at least pay attention.
