Buying food or groceries with Bitcoin

[Abiky]

Bitcoin's popularity has been increasing ever since the bull market of 2017 took place. Even with the pandemic, prices have recovered to their original levels (near $10k) in just a matter of months. More people are accepting Bitcoin worldwide, albeit at a slow and steady pace. I've seen many sites out there in the online world which accepts Bitcoin for goods and services. But the number of businesses and merchants accepting it for food or groceries are quite limited. In the physical world, supermarkets and even fast foods haven't even adopted Bitcoin yet. Fiat is still the predominant type of currency in the mainstream world, for buying items that are required for one's survival.

Do you think that in the future it'll be possible to buy food or groceries with Bitcoin? I know that volatility is a huge issue for Bitcoin to be accepted as an alternative to traditional Fiat, but merchants and businesses could quickly convert Bitcoin to a stablecoin minimizing the risk of loss. What are your thoughts?

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[btc_angela]

Again, merchants are basing it on demand. "If" for the next 5 years, we see a huge spike on bitcoin's demand I wouldn't be surprised is small to mid level online merchants began to accept because their customers are more willing and want to see them as an "option" for regulars like credit/debit or PayPal. Here in my country we have seen growth in terms of cashless payments. So maybe in the future, bitcoin will be readily accepted even by big companies not just in food or grocery sectors.

[Anonylz]

Price hike or price surge should not be a determine factor for btc acceptance, when people accept btc it should be because of the usefulness and effectiveness of it, the ability of btc to provide seemless services to people more than the traditional fiat currency, when you accept B over A it should be because B is better in every aspect and serve 100% purposes more than A,

Eventually ones people start seeing the difference between using btc and using fiat which is more convenient and less expensive to use the demand to use it will grow faster,  whether it is businesses or individuals, ones they understand this important aspect, then I believe popularity, acceptance, adoption etc will happen massively.

[batang_bitcoin]

Do you think that in the future it'll be possible to buy food or groceries with Bitcoin?

It is. The third-party services will intervene in this technology so that these merchants or supermarkets can easily control their bitcoins received and convert them to cash. In that way, they don't have to worry about the volatility of bitcoin if ever they already know that there's a way to change it to fiat. That's the problem that these merchandisers, supermarkets, and other establishments when somebody asks them to receive bitcoin. They thought that there's no service like that in favor to their likes as a business entity.

[Rafael_Carrero]

I don't think that grocery markets accepting Bitcoin will be so popular in the future. It's a cool startup idea and can improve crypto adoption, but it isn't very convenient for retailers.

[nicecrypto]

Who knows what the future holds, btc is gaining popularity and recognition everyday that passes, new stores are accepting btc slowly, if using btc to buy groceries is more cheaper than using fiat I think people will start using btc to buy eventually in the near future, for now, many people are still very comfortable using fiat to make payments whether it is online or offline.

[Little Mouse]

There is option for cover the volatility like Bitpay and in futyre more option may come. I do not think that will be an issue in future to be resistance in Bitcoin to be used to buy food and groceries. I just read this, FED claiming Bitcoin as another form of fiat- https://www.coindesk.com/is-bitcoin-fiat-new-york-federal-reserve

[Lorence.xD]

Who knows what the future holds, btc is gaining popularity and recognition everyday that passes, new stores are accepting btc slowly, if using btc to buy groceries is more cheaper than using fiat I think people will start using btc to buy eventually in the near future, for now, many people are still very comfortable using fiat to make payments whether it is online or offline.

With the number of people knowing a thing about bitcoin versus the population of the entire world that uses fiat, I think that it is still a long way before we can balance the scales, not many have the access to the technology and the cap of bitcoin is not enough for the billion population of the world since there will be individual imbalances on how much someone is holding. The future is not something that we should worry that much about because we will get there when we get there.

[pooya87]

there are two problems that i see preventing or at least slowing down such adoption.

first is the very small adoption of bitcoin itself. so far not that many people know about bitcoin and from those people a small percentage have actually bought bitcoin. and finally from that small percentage, even a small percentage are also willing to spend their bitcoins as they would any other currency and instead prefer holding it as an investment.
so when the demand for the grocery store to accept bitcoin is very little to non-existent in some places, we can't expect them to start accepting bitcoin.

second problem is the fees. not just them being high from time to time (although that is also a downside) but them going up during spikes. it creates bad experience. imagine paying with the recommended fee then suddenly there is a spike and your fee is no longer high enough. it has happened to me multiple times and at most i had to bump the fee 3 times to get it to confirm after making a trade. and that turns people away and that little percentage i mentioned above also joins the other percentage in holding as an investment instead.

[qiwoman2]

there are two problems that i see preventing or at least slowing down such adoption.

first is the very small adoption of bitcoin itself. so far not that many people know about bitcoin and from those people a small percentage have actually bought bitcoin. and finally from that small percentage, even a small percentage are also willing to spend their bitcoins as they would any other currency and instead prefer holding it as an investment.
so when the demand for the grocery store to accept bitcoin is very little to non-existent in some places, we can't expect them to start accepting bitcoin.

second problem is the fees. not just them being high from time to time (although that is also a downside) but them going up during spikes. it creates bad experience. imagine paying with the recommended fee then suddenly there is a spike and your fee is no longer high enough. it has happened to me multiple times and at most i had to bump the fee 3 times to get it to confirm after making a trade. and that turns people away and that little percentage i mentioned above also joins the other percentage in holding as an investment instead.

We certainly need more adoption of BTC, that's for sure. When I see the whole Crypto marketcap for the last two years still sitting under 300 Billion USD, that is a very small market compared to other financial markets. So I agree that we have a long way to go yet. I am trying to educate my family into using Bitcoin and so far it's only myself and my father who actually use and hold BTC. I am the only member of my family that lives on the Blockchain and I live entirely from Bitcoin as my salary form my main job is paid to me in BTC. The more people enter the Bitcoin market, the more popular it will become to use and more merchants will adopt it.

[davis196]

Bitcoin's popularity has been increasing ever since the bull market of 2017 took place. Even with the pandemic, prices have recovered to their original levels (near $10k) in just a matter of months. More people are accepting Bitcoin worldwide, albeit at a slow and steady pace. I've seen many sites out there in the online world which accepts Bitcoin for goods and services. But the number of businesses and merchants accepting it for food or groceries are quite limited. In the physical world, supermarkets and even fast foods haven't even adopted Bitcoin yet. Fiat is still the predominant type of currency in the mainstream world, for buying items that are required for one's survival.

Do you think that in the future it'll be possible to buy food or groceries with Bitcoin? I know that volatility is a huge issue for Bitcoin to be accepted as an alternative to traditional Fiat, but merchants and businesses could quickly convert Bitcoin to a stablecoin minimizing the risk of loss. What are your thoughts?

This topic has been discussed so many times.What's the point of starting the same discussion all over again.
Bitcoin will most likely remain to be used as "digital gold" and online financial asset.
Do you go to the grocery store to buy food using real gold,stocks and bonds?I don't think so.
Accepting BTC payments and then quickly converting BTC to a stablecoin makes the whole process of BTC adoption pointless.
If the merchants are so afraid of the BTC price volatility,they would never accept Bitcoin payments anyway.

[Debonaire217]

Who knows what the future holds, btc is gaining popularity and recognition everyday that passes, new stores are accepting btc slowly, if using btc to buy groceries is more cheaper than using fiat I think people will start using btc to buy eventually in the near future, for now, many people are still very comfortable using fiat to make payments whether it is online or offline.

Basically it's part of what we can do to take advantage of our current situation, transacting using bitcoin might be hard in the beginning because you might need to copy paste the entire wallet address, and the other option which is to scan QR code is also hard considering its security flaws. If ever bitcoin transaction develops, we can use it to buy literally anything else faster than fiats. It just needs to have a few considerations.

On the other hand, buying goods while you are at home is more appropriate, you don't need to go outside as they will directly deliver it to your home and what you just need to do is to sanitize what you bought.

[stompix]

When are you people going to learn that price is not related to daily usage?

By tomorrow the price could spike to 100k, do you think that there will be x10 people buying stuff with BTC? No!
If that would have been the case by this time we would have either reached a constant 10$ fee, a thing that would have killed the trend on its own or the lighting network would be on fire. But it's not!!!!

Seriously, look at your own transactions, and then make a percentage regarding those in which you have bought groceries or food or even electronics online, now apply that percentage to the 300k daily transactions and you will realize bitcoiners all over the world make fewer purchases a day that a single Walmart.

Why do you think merchants are not opting for bitcoin payments? Do you think they are that stupid? Do you think that people running successful chain stores for decades are simply stupid and some kids on a forum know better? There is a simple problem, other than shouting on the forum, there is no real-world demand for those payments! Why would a chain store with 10 million clients implement this solution, go through the legal trouble, make contracts with 3rd parties, instruct their cashiers, buy equipment for 10-20 customers who would anyhow have bought the merchandise with cash or card?

Bitpay which is the largest processor right now is doing an enormous...100k transactions a month! 3k a day, half of them going for prepaid cards, hosting, and internet subscriptions.

Nope, as long as 99% of people buy bitcoin as an investment there will be no increase in spending thus no incentive for merchants to offer it as a payment solution.

[Wexnident]

Do you think that in the future it'll be possible to buy food or groceries with Bitcoin? I know that volatility is a huge issue for Bitcoin to be accepted as an alternative to traditional Fiat, but merchants and businesses could quickly convert Bitcoin to a stablecoin minimizing the risk of loss. What are your thoughts?

Heh. You're undermining the essence of Bitcoin as a cryptocurrency with this comment of yours. Bitcoin would be used for daily necessities, almost like fiat, if and only if its volatility disappears (or an alternative for when the volatility remains) and when Bitcoin adoption is seen as a currency, not as an investment. Tbh, the reason for it's volatility is mostly because of the latter condition I said, it's seen as an investment, not as a currency.

Once it turns into the scenario where volatility is gone and is seen as a currency, adoption should follow sooner or later tbh. It's mostly for that reason that only a few e-commerce sites even accept BTC as payment, and why no Physical stores accept Bitcoin (Grocery stores)

[verita1]

We know how to use Bitcoin and we know its advantages and disadvantages. Sadly Bitcoin has an impediment: the laws. There are governments that do not accept that their citizens use it and the nations that accept it are developing measures to tax for their use. Merchants have not wanted to adopt it because of disinterestedness or do not want to handle complex technologies. There could be many reasons but I have pointed out these for being the ones I know from my country.

[$crypto$]

Do you think that in the future it'll be possible to buy food or groceries with Bitcoin? I know that volatility is a huge issue for Bitcoin to be accepted as an alternative to traditional Fiat, but merchants and businesses could quickly convert Bitcoin to a stablecoin minimizing the risk of loss. What are your thoughts?

Going forward about the adoption of bitcoin will increase where many will accept bitcoin as a legal payment tool and of course it will be used easily if buying food and staples will feel easier to use bitcoin, on the other hand bitcoin is still used to buy goods and finished services for food in the future we will reach it.

I am sure the public will accept this because for me it is so easy to do when dealing with a Qr scan.

[KrisAlex18]

I think it would be possible in the future, the number of the user of bitcoin is increasing, it means that the bitcoin becomes more prominent all over the world, in some of the days or in the future, bitcoin can be used for so many things like ordering some foods, hotel reservation, etc. Bitcoin could be used as fiat currency as well, maybe it could happen in the future, its volatility could be an advantage and disadvantage of it but if you are really a believer of the bitcoin you would believe that it could be possible in the future.

[maydna]

I think that is because most people don't know about crypto, especially bitcoin. And if they want to buy something at the supermarket, fast food, or another physical store, they can use credit and debit cards, which means they don't have to use fiat money. That prevents them from the Covid-19 spreads because of using paper money, and they can keep their hands clean. Besides using credit and debit cards, they also have another digital payment that store on their mobile phone, so they can directly deposit to their account, and they can buy what they want.

I am sure that in the future, we can use crypto to buy in the groceries and the local store, but perhaps, we are not only using bitcoin but also using the other coins as the payment system. It's a matter of time for people to know and learn crypto, and once they know the crypto, I think they will encourage each other to use crypto for many things, including buying at the local store.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Nope, as long as 99% of people buy bitcoin as an investment there will be no increase in spending thus no incentive for merchants to offer it as a payment solution.

Therein lies the issue. People say they want more merchants to accept bitcoin, they want to spend their bitcoin on more things, they want to use bitcoin as a currency, but they do absolutely nothing to create demand for it. Merchants aren't going to take the time to start accepting bitcoin, setting up wallets and services, training staff, navigating tax issues, etc., if there is no demand for it. People complaining on a forum achieves nothing. If anyone wants to use bitcoin as a currency, go out and create demand for it. Talk to retailers, merchants, vendors about accepting it. Prioritize using those who already do.

Once it turns into the scenario where volatility is gone and is seen as a currency, adoption should follow sooner or later tbh.

This is completely backwards. People won't suddenly start using bitcoin is a currency "when" the volatility stops. If bitcoin becomes a near global currency, then the volatility will be much reduced, not the other way around.

[LogitechMouse]

Do you think that in the future it'll be possible to buy food or groceries with Bitcoin?

Bitcoin is slowly being adopted already globally but unfortunately, most of the Bitcoin users aren't merchants.

Yes there are some merchants maybe that are accepting Bitcoin as another mode of payment aside from the fiat and maybe some other crypto. Buying food or groceries using Bitcoin in the future is still possible but I don't know when or if it will happen though. Unfortunately, most of the Bitcoin users sees it as an investment or an asset where you will hold it for a long time which is not really like that. Bitcoin has been created as another payment solution but most users don't see it like that which is quite disappointing IMO.