Legitimate use of Bitcoin

[curiousone]

Let me start off by saying this post is not bashing Bitcoin, I love the stuff.

What legitimate purchases are currently being made with Bitcoin?  My cynical outlook predicts the huge majority are only being used for purchasing illegal products/services on underground websites such as silkroad.

I am aware there is a huge list of websites which accept Bitcoin, but I am guessing they make up a small fraction of bitcoins being used?  I'm also sure a lot of donations made to controversial causes like Wikileaks could be considered.

Thoughts?  Again I am not bashing, just want to hear your opinions.

[1713571057]

1713571057

[1713571057]

1713571057

[Kluge]

No way to measure for comparison. If you've looked at the website of various people/organizations accepting BTC for goods/services, then decided to believe BTC is mostly used "illegitimately," there's not much of a way to disagree.

The forum's marketplace certainly shows many legitimate ways to spend Bitcoins, and surely you'll find many successful transactions, but again, that'd be like throwing the Wikipedia page at you with the many goods & services you can spend BTC on.

Steam games (and TF2 items) are popular, home-made goods (food, knitted goods, lasers), FPGAs, fantastic coffee beans, lots of computer components, BTC's an exceptionally easy way to convert between various currencies/"exchanges" (for instance, AmazonUSD to DwollaUSD), houses (someone buy mine, please!), VPS services, game consoles. Those are off the top of my head.


What kind of evidence would convince you?

[PatrickHarnett]

Again with this topic?  There are several threads around, but I use BTC for real stuff.  Examples:

 - Recently purchased 80,000 yen for 200 coins, saving transaction fees that would have taken 4% of value.
 - Recently arrange shipping of a small value item ($50) from the USA via intermediary.  Postage was $9.72 and I paid 3 coins to help compensate for his time.  Useful, but unexciting item, just not available locally, and the company didn't ship outside US.
 - Transferred funds to AUD account to fund legal action to recover a loan (well, part of the legal cost).

And yesterday I purchased
 - a magazine subscription.
 - purchased some GPU power for another non-BTC project.

[Littleshop]

I have bought and sold a bunch of products from iPhones, candy, computer gear, store credit cards.   I regularly sell products on my website for bitcoin with an automated checkout system.

[curiousone]

thanks for replies.  don't need convincing, to be honest my personal view on the legality of drugs makes me fully support websites such as silkroad, I was just interested to see what would be thrown up in discussion..  apologies for same old thread, please link me if you can remember any.

[Foxpup]

I thought the vast majority of bitcoins were used to buy dollars. Which were then used to buy bitcoins again. Sometimes at a profit (and sometimes not). Hopefully this situation will change as bitcoins become more widely accepted.

[PatrickHarnett]

thanks for replies.  don't need convincing, to be honest my personal view on the legality of drugs makes me fully support websites such as silkroad, I was just interested to see what would be thrown up in discussion..  apologies for same old thread, please link me if you can remember any.

No matter, it possibly doesn't hurt to remind people that there are real uses for coins, and as the economy grows, it gets more diverse.

In response to a question I got about the yen, it was a physical delivery.  I travelled 9000 km to a hotel in Tokyo and it had been delivered and was waiting as promised.
As for buying dollars with coins, I do that as well, it pays my daughter's university costs.

[drakahn]

I've bought steam games, pci-e risers, a few months of vps squared, i play poker and i bet on sports

These are the things i have done with bitcoin, and i have no intention of spending my bitcoins yet, lol

[finway]

I've bought a vps  and pay month fee using bitcoins.

[Red Emerald]

I've bought maple syrup, LoL referrals, a couple domain names and even invested in a few Bitcoin in companies around the world.

I've also sold a steam game on www.bitmit.net

[SgtSpike]

www.coindl.com started selling digital goods, and I've made a few sales on it myself.

[logansryche]

Second Life relate items mostly. Haven't bought physical items in a while.

[MoonShadow]

What legitimate purchases are currently being made with Bitcoin?  My cynical outlook predicts the huge majority are only being used for purchasing illegal products/services on underground websites such as silkroad.

Contraband is, beyond doubt, a not insignificant portion of any economy.  However, I seriously doubt that such business is anything near a majority of the Bitcoin economy.  I've personally made dozens of purchases; from a handmade necklace on Etsy, to pretty quartz rocks, to Steam game licenses, to Internet services, to cell phone service (via a Virgin Mobile Top-up card #) to (most recently) candy.  I've never bought anything that could be considered contraband where I live.

[MoonShadow]

I thought the vast majority of bitcoins were used to buy dollars. Which were then used to buy bitcoins again. Sometimes at a profit (and sometimes not). Hopefully this situation will change as bitcoins become more widely accepted.

On quick look at bitcoinwatch.com tells me that the total volume of bitcoin in motion in the past 24 hours was 904,380.25 BTC while the volume on the exchanges presented on that same page total under 73,000.  Granted, there could be a great deal of cash trading off of those markets and some of that first number is users moving BTC from one address to another.  But it seems a bit silly to think that with a daily volume over 10% of the entire monetary base in current circulation, cash/bitcoin trades could make up anything near a majority of real economic trade volume.

[hongus]

USD -(exchanger)-> Bitcoin -(investments)-> More Bitcoins -(exchanger)-> More USD

My current purpose for bitcoins.

[Bees Brothers]

Our little family business is growing, in a small part thanks to the bitcoin community, and will need to expand the number of honeybee hives.

I am hoping in the next couple of weeks to buy bees with Bitcoin  (I'm guessing that might be a first?)

I will have to demonstrate how he could then use bitcoins to buy silver.  

I'm guessing that he will want me to buy the silver and pay him that instead.  But I think this person will be open to it and will think it is cool.  Just a little too technical and won't have the time to learn the ropes.  We shall see...

[Foxpup]

On quick look at bitcoinwatch.com tells me that the total volume of bitcoin in motion in the past 24 hours was 904,380.25 BTC while the volume on the exchanges presented on that same page total under 73,000.  Granted, there could be a great deal of cash trading off of those markets and some of that first number is users moving BTC from one address to another.  But it seems a bit silly to think that with a daily volume over 10% of the entire monetary base in current circulation, cash/bitcoin trades could make up anything near a majority of real economic trade volume.

But just how much of that 904,380.25 BTC is simply people sending coins to themselves for legitimate (change) or illegitimate (laundering) purposes? You don't know. Nobody knows. In any case, 10% of the entire economy is more than a significant fraction, and unless you can show evidence that some other use of bitcoins accounts for more than that, then I stand by what I said.

[Bees Brothers]

Your Salted Honey Caramels are soooooo good! You should set up the site to accept bitcoins on the order page instead of emailing first.

The kids are trying to figure out how to do that right now.  We only expand as they are ready to learn new things, and a bitcoin online store for our web page is a priority.

To bring this back on subject, bitcoin is useful in homeschooling to learn about developing technologies and learn and be part of international communities, investing, scamming awareness...plus you can buy books and software with bitcoins.

Haven't shown the kids the gambling and porn side of bitcoin yet..

[BurtW]

The other day I bought a case of Girl Scout cookies for BTC.  Yum.

[MemoryDealers]

I've personally sold about $20,000 USD worth of Cisco gear in the last week for bitcoins.