[HOW TO] shop with Bitcoin at nearly any store in the US

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Time passes by and everyone starts thinking how to spend those Steem Dollars made on here. Powering them up is good and all, but what if you wanna treat yourself to a fancy dinner or get a haircut right now?

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There are already plenty of tutorials and educational articles explaining how to trade your Steem and SBD to bitcoin or whatever coin there is you want. I would like to focus on things you can get with bitcoin without having to trade it for US dollars meeting other people in person, or having to transfer the money into your bank account and the perks of having a bitcoin wallet installed on your phone (there are downfalls to that too: losing your phone, breaking it etc. so be careful).

Why is it important? There were several occasions in my life where I didn't have any money on me, or I did not have enough, but I had to get something or get somewhere.
I feel like anyone who lives outside the US and wants to buy something from American retailers would find this useful too as sometimes foreign credit and/or debit cards don't work here.

Let's think of a scenario where you find yourself without any cash or a credit card, but:

• you wanna buy at least something- Amazon, Ebay
• you gotta go somewhere immediately, but can't drive, don't have a car - Uber
• you realized you're out of groceries - Walmart etc.
• hey, there's some ice cream - Cold Stone
• so hungry - Chili's, Chipotle, McDonald's etc.
• your roof is leaking - Home Depot.

Well, there you go, you got a Bitcoin Wallet, no need to worry about the actual wallet you accidentally left home!

Let's install Mycelium.

Now when that is done, I suggest you transfer some BTC into it, I'm sure the ways of doing so are well known.

The next step would be installing the Gyft application.

These pictures look pretty blurry, sorry about that, the application didn't let me take screenshots.

As you can see the list of businesses is pretty long, variety is good.

In order to use Gyft, unfortunately, you have to create an account, luckily no phone number confirmation is required, only your email. Usually it doesn't take a long time to get one of the electronic gift cards, all you need to do is to select the store you wanna visit or shop online, choose the amount of money you're willing to spend and buy it. The application will ask you for a contact email address in case there's something wrong with the payment, then you get the option to open up your Mycelium wallet to complete the transaction. Voila!

Consider yourself a lucky owner of a gift card, it's time to make some purchases!

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I like Gyft application because it lets you store the physical gift cards you may receive as a present, and buy new ones with digital currency. If you wanna get anything at an actual store the clerks would just scan your phone screen to finalize the purchase, for when you go online all you have to do is to enter your gift card number at the checkout. It is convenient, easy and overall a simple way to shop with bitcoin.

Happy shopping!

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Let us not forget about the Bitcoin Creators, thank you guys for making it all possible!