The use of bitcoin globally to buy everything from property to commodities is increasingly a reality and one that seems to have no end in sight.
The presence of bitcoin in people’s daily lives is increasingly palpable. For many it began as a way to invest on a small and large scale, others assumed it as a protection against inflation and economic crises in their various countries, but bitcoin, being money, also allows them to purchase goods and services.
Key facts:
- Spain is one of the Spanish-speaking countries that most offers home sales with bitcoin.
- Some suppliers have integrated the Lightning network to facilitate bitcoin purchases.
- Some online stores display the prices of their products in millibitcoin (mBTC).
- The availability of some gift cards will depend on the location of the buyer.
- Buying on Amazon in bitcoin seems impossible, but there is a tool that makes it possible.
In just 13 years since the creation of bitcoin, the cryptocurrency quickly became a valid and legitimate alternative for acquiring goods and services. It has even come to be labeled by many as the currency of the Internet.
Over the years, the process went from buying a couple of pizzas with bitcoin (Bitcoin Pizza Day), to acquiring homes, vehicles, boats and everyday consumer products.
The importance of bitcoin has reached unimaginable levels since it became known. Gradually, various financial players have fallen at the feet of the digital asset, adding it to their treasuries. They range from large and traditional banks in the United States and Europe to countries such as El Salvador and the Central African Republic, which have adopted it as legal tender.
Here are some options for buying bitcoin in various countries.
Directory of what you can buy with Bitcoin
1. Buying homes with bitcoin
In recent years, buying homes with bitcoin is an action that has become popular in countries such as Spain. There you can buy houses and apartments with bitcoin for around 585,000 and 109,000 euros, which represents about 29 BTC and 5 BTC, respectively, as indicated by the website fotocasa.es.
Latin America, being one of the regions that has adopted bitcoin the most, is another space in which entrepreneurs have opted to sell homes with BTC. There are examples in Colombia and Mexico with real estate company La Haus, which offers the option to buy with bitcoin.
E-commerce giant Mercado Libre has taken advantage of the bitcoin boom and also allows buying apartments with BTC, but only in Argentina.
The company plans to accept bitcoin in other Latin American countries for different items, although so far it does not have a specific date for when the step will be taken.
2. Buying vehicles and boats with bitcoin
The automotive sector has also gained opportunities with the digital asset, by offering the option of buying cars with bitcoin.
One Spanish-speaking country where there is a large supply of cars that can be purchased with the cryptocurrency is Spain. There you can get high-end vehicles of brands such as Mercedes Benz, BMW, and Audi, for the price of 1 BTC to 4 BTC.
A transaction made with bitcoin in 2010
What is known as the first purchase made with BTC in history took place on May 22, 2010. This historic event is now known as Bitcoin Pizza Day, because on that date American programmer Laszlo Hanyecz bought two pizzas for 10,000 BTC.
Hanyecz’s purchase became a cause for celebration every year and is an event in which bitcoiners buy pizzas and share to celebrate that this day marked a before and after of Bitcoin as a technology, to be transformed “officially” into money.
The ACCAR dealership, for its part, also has the option of buying vehicles with bitcoin at its Madrid and Barcelona locations. Additionally, it is also possible to pay for car maintenance or repairs with the digital asset.
ACCAR has a wide variety of low, medium and high-end brands, from Fiat, Seat, to Ferrari or Porsche, with prices ranging from 0.49 BTC to 10 BTC.
3. Buy airline tickets with bitcoin
For travel and tourism lovers, there are options to buy airline tickets, hotel accommodations and even car rentals around the world during vacations with bitcoin.
Destinia has been among the pioneering online travel agencies accepting bitcoin since 2014. On its website you can see flight fares expressed in thousandths of bitcoin or millibitcoin (mBTC). The company believes that this way it is simpler for users and more convenient when displaying prices.
There we could see that prices range from 26 mBTC to 68 mBTC. The fare varies depending on the class of travel, stopovers and amount of baggage. For example, a trip with the cheapest prices in economy class, with a stopover in Panama, round trip is priced at 53 mBTC, which represents USD 1,127.
Destinia only allows bitcoin payments as long as the services or products are purchased through its website. However, exceptions apply for some hotels that only accept payment at the front desk, or flights where the airline only accepts payment by credit card.
Travala.com is a company that has broken into the tourism sector as an intermediary in the sale of tickets with bitcoin and more than 20 other cryptocurrencies. The company has become so involved in the world of digital assets that it has its own token called AVA.
Finally, there is Bitrefill, a company that offers the purchase of gift cards with bitcoin for flights on more than 300 international airlines and 980 destinations.
From Bitrefill’s platform you can purchase gift cards, for example, the so-called Flightgift. The maximum price of the cards is USD 10,000 at the exchange rate in BTC.
For the more affluent who prefer private flights, there is the option of acquiring their own aircraft with BTC, through the company Aviatrade, based in New Jersey, USA. The company enabled the option of payments with the leading cryptocurrency in 2020.
4. Buying video games with bitcoin
The video game industry has been able to complement itself with the technology offered by Bitcoin. In this sense, some websites have decided to offer games paid with bitcoin for different platforms, but some only allow it through gift cards, as we will see below.
One of the websites that only accepts bitcoin payments is Joltfun, which also accepts payments through the Lightning network. There are more than 22,000 Playstation, Steam, Xbox Live and PC games on the platform.
Depending on the titles, some may be available globally or only in the European Union or the United States.
Joltfun offers more than 20,000 games from various platforms and game studios. Source: joltfun.com
In the same vein, there is the Keys4Coins website. This company also offers video games paid with bitcoin. Here you can get a wide variety of games, but only for PC. In addition to BTC, they allow payments with ether (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), Monero (XMR), Dogecoin (DOGE) and DASH.
From platforms that accept only bitcoin payments, we move on to those that accept the asset, but also other means of payment such as PayPal, credit and debit cards.
One of those is Kinguin, the company allows you to buy game keys to be used on PC, from Xbox and Playstation, and from platforms such as Steam, Epic Games and Origin. You can even reserve the keys for the games, so that users are the first to have the video game on its release date.
At Kinguin you can buy with BTC, other cryptocurrencies and traditional methods such as debit and credit cards.
Another company that accepts bitcoin for video games of different platforms is Indiegala. In addition to BTC, they allow payments with traditional formats. There you can get video games and you can also buy prepaid gift cards to access a large number of games.
G2A.com joins the list, this website offers a variety of games ranging from FIFA 23, Grand Theft Auto V, among many others. The company accepts more than 200 payment methods, among which is bitcoin.
Some of the games available are from Xbox and Playstation, as well as platforms such as Steam, Epic Games and Origin.
5. Buying gift cards with bitcoin
In the sector of gift cards that can be purchased with bitcoin, there is a wide variety of platforms that offer this type of service.
One of the most popular is Bitrefill, the company allows the purchase of gift cards from more than 5,000 gift cards from a variety of retailers, including Amazon, Apple, Walmart, Steam or Google Play. Phone reloads are also available on the website.
Bitrefill can be purchased through a variety of exchanges such as Binance Pay, Coinbase, Kraken, Trust Wallet, Bitfinex, Blockchain, KuCoin, Ledger, Strike, Bitstamp, among others.
Payments through Lightning without commissions
Some suppliers of goods and services have chosen to integrate Lightning into their businesses. This network facilitates the purchase of products, since when buying with bitcoin, payments do not require block confirmations and are instantaneous. In addition, it allows sending funds as small as 1 satoshi, or 0.00000001 BTC, without custody risk and immaterial commissions.
Another platform is CryptoRefills, this one allows phone top-ups, gift cards, vouchers and electronic gifts with bitcoin.
The gift cards can be used on Amazon, Steam, Google Play, iTunes, Hotels.com, clothing brands such as Adidas, for streaming platforms such as Netflix. Additionally, it allows the acquisition of Visa and MasterCard prepaid cards.
Similar to the aforementioned platforms is Coinsbee.com. On this site you can make mobile recharges or gift cards with bitcoin, to access more than 2,500 brands available in more than 165 countries.
Also as in the previous platform, Visa and MasterCard cards can be purchased with bitcoin.
CoinGate is also part of the extensive list of websites for accessing gift cards with bitcoin. Steam, Apple, Xbox, Starbucks and Roblox gift cards can be purchased, along with thousands of other options. There are over 2,000+ brands of products available.
Gift cards on CoinGate can be purchased through the Lightning network for BTC transactions.
Another option is eGifter which has, like its competitors, a variety of categories to choose from, from clothing and accessories to games, food, entertainment and a wide range of products.
However, it does not offer gift cards for video games, and it is only available in the U.S. eGifter uses BitPay, a payment processing platform and wallet for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
It is important to note that in order to purchase gift cards, you must indicate in which country you are located, to know which gift cards are available in your territory.
6. Buying on Amazon with bitcoin
Buying products on Amazon with bitcoin is also a possibility, although not directly, because the company, for the moment, does not accept the crypto-asset. However, there is Purse, a store that acts as an intermediary between the bitcoiner and the famous e-commerce company.
From Purse you can buy, either by copying the link to the product directly from the Amazon website or by searching for it by name. Then, it must be added to the shopping cart and paid with BTC through the Lightning network.
Those funds are transferred to an “earner” or person who agrees to exchange their Amazon gift cards to receive the cryptocurrency. In this way, they will fund the purchase through Purse, shortly after an earner accepts, their tracking information is added to observe and confirm delivery.
Additionally, they offer cashback on purchases (cashback) and discounts on all products.
7. Buying software, programs and tools with bitcoin
As can be seen in this directory, bitcoin can be used, among other things, to buy a wide range of products and services, including areas related to software and computer tools.
In the case of Internet domains, there is a website called bitdomain.biz that allows you to purchase domains, hosting services and web pages with bitcoin. The prices of the services are reflected in thousandths of bitcoin (mBTC) and range from 1.22 mBTC for a .com domain to 137 mBTC for a .org domain.
For its part, the hosting service varies according to the company with which the work is to be done and prices range from mBTC 0.49 to mBTC 0.64. The company works with exchanges such as Binance, Coinbase, Bitpanda, BitMex, among others.
Beware of scams
Internet scams are the order of the day and even more so in areas such as bitcoin. Therefore, it is important that purchases are made directly on the official websites of the stores or companies that provide the services mentioned in this directory.
It should be taken into account that fraudsters can create web pages similar to the official ones, only with the interest of scamming the most defenseless.
The company Proton, which has been offering privacy-focused email and VPN services for several years, also accepts bitcoin.
In the case of VPN services, the company clarifies that bitcoin is not available as a payment method during account registration, although it can be used to purchase account credits once you have registered on the website. Those credits can be used to purchase your paid plan on Proton.
In response to the blocking
On a curious note, the Proton company accepts bitcoin as a means of payment, since PayPal did not allow it to access USD 250,000 collected from donations received.
In conclusion, Bitcoin has given mankind the opportunity to obtain products of different items in an expeditious manner, without going through the hoops of traditional finance, which are usually slow and with obstacles. However, there is still a long way to go for the digital asset to be fully utilized.
