Photo: Rovsky (Shutterstock)
Most people Buy and hold cryptocurrency in the hope that one day it will replace fiat currencies and thereby increase in value. However, some increasingly want to spend it as well, as 40% of crypto owners plan to make a purchase in the next year, according to a current survey.
While the ways you can do this are still limited (and confused), retailers are offering a growing number of ways to actually use your cryptocurrency as currency.
Here’s a look at some of the things you can buy with crypto right now:
- Gift cards: In exchange for currencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, Pages like eGifter and Ref offer gift cards for all types of retailers such as Sony, the NBA Store, Spotify, Southwest Airlines and Nordstrom. Of course, gift cards are an added hassle if you’d rather spend directly at these retailers – but for now, gift cards allow you to spend at a variety of retailers that typically don’t accept cryptocurrencies.
- Sports events: The NBA’s Sacramento Kings, Dallas Mavericks, and Miami Dolphins accept crypto for tickets, as does the NHL’s San Jose Sharks. The Oakland A’s of the MLB accept now Bitcoin also for a select number of luxury box suites.
- Housewares: American retailer Overstock offers furnishings, home improvement materials and jewelry. They also accept Bitcoin directly without the need for an intermediate app or gift card exchange.
- Coffee: You will need an app called Bakkt to do this, but it is possible to convert bitcoin to credits in the Starbucks app. If you’re already a regular customer and app user, this could be a convenient way to spend crypto.
- Travel: All types of travel agents accept crypto for flight and hotel bookings (we made a post about all of your options.) here). The special thing is Travalawho has a partnership with Expedia; Crypto holders can also spend it on more than 700,000 Expedia group hotels and accommodations.
- Arts: Auction houses Sotheby’s and Christie’s accepts the cryptocurrencies Ethereum and Bitcoin for big item auctions. And while this art would be completely digital, you could dip your toe in the highly speculative world of non-fungible tokensor NFTs. There is a number of marketplaces also to choose from.
- Porn: Mindgeek, which operates a number of porn sites (including Pornhub), accepts cryptocurrency, as does Chaturbate. As the New York Times points out, Cryptocurrency can be used anonymously, which makes it the preferred payment option for people who don’t want their spending tracked.
