Ok I am blonde and NOT good at math so help me here. My hubby and I are missionaries living in one country and working in about 14 others. We travel constantly. People mostly from America and Europe send us donations from time to time. If I were to use Bitcoin how would this work? How would I turn bitcoins to usable national currency like Euros. and how would I deposit that money in my bank account?
For example: Right now I use Paypal, so a person in Montana sends me 100 dollars (through Paypal) and I accept it, exchange it to the 10 euros its worth (just kidding I know its worth a bit more then that) and withdraw it to my bank account. How would that transaction work with bitcoin?
Blessings,
ALG
First things first, Bitcoin is a currency too, but in its infancy stages. A
usable currency, well, that's what we're trying to accomplish.
To be perfectly honest, there is little to be gained from accepting Bitcoins in your circumstance, other than the satisfaction of increasing awareness about the system (which of course we all appreciate). Since you don't really care about anonymity, one of the main selling points of Bitcoin is gone. Another major selling point is that Bitcoin is decentralized, meaning that PayPal/Visa/Discover etc can never shut you down if they feel like it (like they did with Wikileaks). If your donations won't make PayPal shut you down, then that benefit doesn't help you much.
As others have mentioned, at the current stage you'll need a Bitcoin-to-local-currency exchange to make Bitcoin donations useful, unless you happen to want one of the services offered in our Marketplace forum, or if you choose to speculate and hold on to them and hope that the value of Bitcoin is going to be worth more in the future. Your donators would also probably require a local-currency-to-Bitcoin exchange just to donate to you in the first place, so it's rather roundabout.
In short, while we would
highly appreciate it if you accepted Bitcoin as an
option for donations, it's currently not feasible to use it as your only source. We're still in the stage that increasing awareness is the best thing one can do.
--
On a personal note, I have much respect for missionaries because I believe that they have a positive net effect on the places they travel, religious debates aside. Maybe I'm just biased because two of the most influential people in my growing life ended up becoming missionaries (you're not Mr. and Mrs. Voss right? hehe), but I just want to thank you for what you do.