Bitcoin Forum

My wife and I are fairly new to btc and maybe this will help other newbies. We initially had the thought of strictly "hoarding" btc.....but we've agreed lately that is really not what btc was ever created for. We correctly came to the conclusion that if we don't SPEND at least some of the btc, we are essentially hurting it's over all implementation.

So I ordered a SHIFT card and I have received it. I'm 99% sure how it works and I'm comfortable with it, etc...(haven't had a chance to use it yet)....but my question is: By using the SHIFT card to use BTC to purchase everyday items from anywhere, ARE WE REALLY contributing to the "spending" of btc or is at all somehow smoke and mirrors that doesn't really help the cause?

Thanks for any responses.

The BTC you spend via this method isn't going to go to the company where you made the purchase. Instead Coinbase will take your BTC (transfer it to their wallet) and provide the USD to the vendor you are making your purchase from. Then they (Coinbase) will take the BTC they took from you and sell it to someone else. It's very similar to how traditional banking works where it is being handled for you on the backend.

If you want to "traditionally" use BTC then what you are doing isn't that.

If you were to use btc to pay for goods or services in online shops that directly accepts them, I guess that would be 'actively' using it as a currency.

Another way would be paying for goods and/or services offline in shops/stores/restaurants that accept btc.
Although these offline merchants usually use third-party payment processors like BitPay, it should still raise awareness for btc to some degree since it'll show not just merchants, but other people as well that BTC can indeed be used not just online, but for offline transactions as well.

Anyway, there's nothing wrong with using bitcoin cards as it is more convenient for the moment.

Bitcoin Debit Cards and services that provide them are working more like exchanges, so you are not spending Bitcoin in direct way.

But don't worry, the number of places where you can pay directly in BTC is growing every day ;)

Actually with shift like bitcoin debit cards you are actually converting your bitcoin to fiat which will actually drain away some marketcap from bitcoin which in turn can lower the price per bitcoin. So basically you are not contributing spending bitcoin because it will instantly get converted into fiat for which it have to fill the buy order on any of the trading platform which will actually create sell pressure.

Better you hold your bitcoin if you really like to contribute to bitcoin, because this will limit the supply.

A small shift card cannot "drain the market value of bit[Suspicious link removed]gle "velocity of money" to understand how it affects.

One little card can not, but thousends of cards can make it. It is better to support accepting Bitcoin directly than encourage the use of Bitcoin Debit Cards. We can tolerate it as a temporary substitute, but we all know that it is not good solution.

If you'd realised there's so many bitcoin debit card had been issued out there by various companies thus the cards which were distributed might be above thousands and yeah, that's what actually happen when you use bitcoin, the bitcoin are actually exchanged to fiat by the card providers. They companies themselves often called the card as bitcoin debit card to attract people or you can say it marketing language if it was from my opinion