It's still really hard to use bitcoin as a regular currency

[alyssa85]

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/14/despite-its-record-setting-surge-this-year-its-still-really-hard-use-bitcoin-as-a-regular-currency.html

With all the hysteria around bitcoin surging to records and possibly being the currency of the future, CNBC decided to put it to the test. Can one person live off of bitcoin for a week?

New York City may have thousands of restaurants and bars, but only a handful accept bitcoin. We made a lot of calls and reached out to several vendors to see if they accept the digital currency. We also leveraged "bitcoin maps" online which were not entirely accurate.

However, we did find a few eateries in the city who accept the currency directly - two of which are French restaurants in lower Manhattan – Le Village and La Serine.

Another option was using Gyft.com, a site which allows you to purchase gift cards to Whole Foods, Starbucks, CVS, etc with bitcoin. This ended up being tremendously helpful, but also highlighted the reliance one must have on third parties to get by just on bitcoin.

Another big takeaway? Using bitcoin can be costly. Checking out at vendors that accept bitcoin is relatively easy, but I ended up spending on average 40 percent more versus paying with dollars or credit card because of unfavorable conversion rates and additional transaction fees. For example, my ice cream sandwich at Melt sold for $5, but with bitcoin I ended up spending the equivalent of more than $9. The gift cards also come with additional fees.

Transportation is also a challenge. As a reporter, I am constantly on the go, traveling around the city to meet sources, attend conferences and coming on air from different studios. The subway is typically how I get around town. Unfortunately subways do not accept bitcoin. Same story for yellow taxis.

The third option (besides walking) was ride-sharing apps. I was able to buy an Uber gift card via Gyft.com. I ended up spending more time and money taking this roundabout way, but at least I could travel from downtown to the upper west side without walking.

After a couple days, I started reaching out to folks in the NYC bitcoin community. I found a bitcoin investor online who was wiling to sell me a subway card in exchange for bitcoin. I met him at Penn Station the following day and he gladly helped me out. This interaction proved to me that the bitcoin network is very supportive of one another.

[qiman]

Bitcoin fees have become too big now for day to day smaller transactions. I paid over ten dollars for a five hundred dollar value transaction and it took also twnety four hours plus to get through to the other side. So Bitcoin is only best used for bigger transactions in my view that is.

[n691309]

Not always using bitcoin is good and cheap, to make small (micro) payments then bitcoin is not a good currency because the fees that are required to be confirmed in the next blocks or in the same day are very high and not recommended for these kind of payments. Using bitcoin for everyday use is hard to because of these fees and waiting confirmations, making multiple transaction within a day doesn't seems good nor cheap.

[alyssa85]

Bitcoin fees have become too big now for day to day smaller transactions. I paid over ten dollars for a five hundred dollar value transaction and it took also twnety four hours plus to get through to the other side. So Bitcoin is only best used for bigger transactions in my view that is.

The solution is to persuade vendors to accepts alts like Doge. It's quick and has low fees and is perfect for use as a currency. The problem is persuading vendors to allow multiple cryptocurrencies.

[couture]

I think this is why bitcoin will perhaps act as the 'gold' backing to other currencies and the other altcoins will provide more real world functionality
At least that would be nice if that happened

[Daniel91]

I can talk about my country only.
Central bank issued statement about bitcoin and said that bitcoin can't be used as money or financial asset.
So, we have a few merchants who accept payments in Bitcoins, and a few bitcoin ATM but it's all.
If central bank don't accept bitcoin as alternative, official currency, there is no way that we will be able to use bitcoin as a regular currency.
Our central bank also have to follow EU regulations so it's even more complicate issue.

[Caelanpelley]

Bitcoin fees have become too big now for day to day smaller transactions. I paid over ten dollars for a five hundred dollar value transaction and it took also twnety four hours plus to get through to the other side. So Bitcoin is only best used for bigger transactions in my view that is.

The solution is to persuade vendors to accepts alts like Doge. It's quick and has low fees and is perfect for use as a currency. The problem is persuading vendors to allow multiple cryptocurrencies.

There are numerous deals typically are worth less that the charge of bitcoin against higher value transactions, it will be like? It is a disadvantage for users.

[haroldtee]

Using bitcoin now as a regular currency is a NO NO! The transaction fees have become a huge pain in the flesh except if you are using it for a MACRO transaction. I can't imagine myself purchasing something for $10 and being charged about $3 as a transaction fee. For some years back, it was easy making micro transactions which could have helped achieved most merchants accepting it and then using it daily for purchases but now that the chain is choked, it is crazy. Also, depending on the policy and regulation of each country so far, using as a regular currency? We are not even there yet as not all merchants accepts bitcoin as payment, not even with all these stuffs going on in the bitcoin world.

[NorrisK]

The days of doing small purchases with bitcoin are over now. The fees have risen too much to make this feasible.

Bitcoin is changing more to a store of value in its current shape than a currency.

[Shenzou]

The days of doing small purchases with bitcoin are over now. The fees have risen too much to make this feasible.

Bitcoin is changing more to a store of value in its current shape than a currency.

Indeed, trying to use bitcoin to buy things has been a major probel since bitcoin has first been released and this probelm became even harder these days with the transaction getting slower and fees getting higher, i means most of the gmabling sites that are the major target when it comes to spending some coins are shutting down because if this issue, the only way that we could use bitcoin to buy stuff is either by using bitcoin debit cards or exchanging it to cash

[Adbitco]

It might be hard to use bitcoin as a regular currency but it was harder about a few years ago. Bitcoin is still new to a large number of people and it's evolving and gaining popularity slowly but surely. I still believe bitcoin has a very good future and it has the potential to replace fiat currencies. The only problem it has nowadays is high fee which I hope will be resolved soon. Bitcoin is there to stay and over the years the usage of bitcoin by masses has increased. Bitcoin will surely succeed in achieving the goal which it was created to achieve

[hatshepsut93]

The days of doing small purchases with bitcoin are over now. The fees have risen too much to make this feasible.

Bitcoin is changing more to a store of value in its current shape than a currency.

You are right, even one year ago transaction fees in terms of both satoshi/byte and USD value were much lower, for example you could pay 10 sat/byte, which would be 0.0001 BTC in fee for 1 kB transaction, and that would be only $0.04-0.06 for ANY transaction - be it $1000 or $1. At that point the only downside of Bitcoin was volatility, but today we have both volatility and giant fees, which means it's very hard to use BTC for both merchants and customers for their daily transactions.

[BingoDog]

Bitcoin still has many issues that stop it from beeing used as fiat currencies, like fees issues, time of confirmation, volatility of price and so on. With time some of these issues might be solved, some not. But I doubt that will be ever so fully adopted and implemented like fiat currencies, bitcoin will always be a kind of "side player".

[BossMacko]

It really is the more higher you will sell, or trade the higher the fee you need to pay for the transaction. With that it will not become a regular currency what i mean is, it will not become a user friendly because not all people want to pay high amount for transaction fee.

[dissident]

What the exchanges need to do is make BTC-LTC transactions commission free.. they we can effectively use LTC to switch between exchanges and have far fewer fees. This is what I suggested to poloniex. They won't do it, but until they do I'm not going to do a lot of moving stuff around between exchanges.

[bitllionaire]

Bitcoin fees have become too big now for day to day smaller transactions. I paid over ten dollars for a five hundred dollar value transaction and it took also twnety four hours plus to get through to the other side. So Bitcoin is only best used for bigger transactions in my view that is.

yes that is correct that transaction fee s really a big problem now and specially for small transaction. i think there must be separate transaction fee for small transaction, through this we can become able to use bitcoin for purchasing small items. so that it may not effect us too much.

[alyssa85]

The days of doing small purchases with bitcoin are over now. The fees have risen too much to make this feasible.

Bitcoin is changing more to a store of value in its current shape than a currency.

The problem is, there was so much hype a few years ago about bitcoin being a currency, that journalists now think it's a bit of a failure if you can't spend it on regular things.

[RealBitcoin]

I will just get harder and harder if the fees are keep rising, you'd rather want to use another currency if shopping is your primary goal.

[bitcoin199]

This is unfortunately true, even now, the adoption of bitcoins didn't reach the critical point enabling a person to actually live just with it, you would still need to exchange it to your currency to get the most use of it. There are things being sold for BTC and you can buy them but there are things which aren't and are needed to live.
Even food, if you don't buy a gift card with bitcoins, you would need to search for hours for a physical shop/resturants which is hard.

[jorneyflair]

I think that the article really sums it up well. The current situation is that bitcoin is still largely a speculative tool and an investment, which is good. I invest bitcoin for the long term as well and hold it to store my wealth away from prying eyes. Bitcoin is incredibly useful for this. It is also used to transact online, and is also easier and much more secure than credit cards which can get into the wrong hands easily.

However most people that accept bitcoin accepts it on the basis that it can be converted to fiat in real time via a service such as Bitpay. This is not good for stability of bitcoin, nor is it good for the usibility for bitcoin. If bitcoin can transact in real life as well as online, it'll make it much more useful and therefore give it a much better chance of gaining mass adoption.

I will just get harder and harder if the fees are keep rising, you'd rather want to use another currency if shopping is your primary goal.

Agreed, it's best to save BTC for overseas transactions for now.