Using Cryptocurrency to buy everyday stuff

Hi Steemians,
One of my followers replied to one of my articles that Bitcoin and cryptocurrency are great in theory, but practically speaking, they have no utility in every day life. I greatly enjoyed reading this comment because it gives me an opportunity to write an article about the practical everyday uses of cryptocurrency. I started researching this topic and literally during this bear market many different methods of utilizing cryptocurrency for commerce has developed. I decided to break it down to different mechanisms for using cryptocurrency.

1. Coinbase’s “Merchant Solution” product allows merchants to accept cryptocurrency.
   Coinbase, has a product called Coinbase Commerce, which makes it easy for merchants to accept cryptocurrencies with the aim of attracting new merchants to its platform. The solution will allow merchants using the service to accept cryptocurrency directly as payment into a user-controlled wallet. It supports multiple cryptocurrencies, while merchants will have the option to accept payments in Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, and Litecoin.
   Coinbase, says it designed this solution to serve merchants worldwide. Eventually the platform will support multiple cryptocurrencies. This new merchant specific solution helps Coinbase into a service area currently dominated by Bitpay, who was first to market with its cryptocurrency payment acceptance services.
   Unlike most of the merchant products, Coinbase Commerce is not a hosted service, so merchants will have full control of their digital currency. Coinbase is providing this service to both big and small businesses, Coinbase made the process very simple Commerce very simple, so any merchant can sign with just an email address and a valid phone number.
   Coinbase already is partnering with e-commerce giant Shopify, a Canadian e-commerce platform s to integrate the new system on their platform. A Canadian multi-e-commerce platform company.
   https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@shortsegments/coinbase-s-merchant-solution-allows-merchants-to-accept-four-cryptocurrencies

2. Coin Map Webpage based search engine for places to spend your cryptocurrency worldwide?
   This is a brief report on a webpage based interface where you can go and find retailers, restaurants and other businesses which accept cryptocurrency near you or in a geographic location, which you pick. I invite you to try and determine what major restaurant, grocery stores, clothing stores and other facilities in your area. If you can find ten locations to purchase everyday things in your city using this API and put them in a comment that would be terrific.
   https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@shortsegments/coin-map-webpage-based-search-engine-for-places-to-spend-your-cryptocurrency-worldwide

3. Coin exchanges which cater to retailers
   These coin exchanges don’t do business just with cryptocurrency traders, they also provide services to retailers, where they are the electronic middlemen between buyers with crypto and retailers with various goods. The transaction goes like this: you agree to pay a certain price in a fiat currency like US Dollars, you give your cryptocurrency to an coin exchanger like Coinbase or BitPay and they give the retailer fiat like US dollars and the retailers gives you the item. But those three steps are invisible to you. You just indicate on the at checkout that you would like to pay for your item in cryptocurrency, instead of VISA, Mastercard, Amex or PayPal. This requires a little research because originally this # was limited to Bitcoin, but now their are many retailers utilizing systems created by entities like Coinbase, Bitfly and ShapeShifter to name a few, which allow retailers to accept many Altcoins like Litecoin, Ripple, Dash and of course STEEM.

4. Direct Payments
   Some retailers and business will take your cryptocurrency directly and others use a middleman like the Cryptocurrency exchanger ShapeShift to accept 40-45 different Altcoins from you, which the ShapeShift company turns into Bitcoin and gives to the retailer. This process is similar to PayPal or where your indicate what your would like to buy, select your payment method and instead of being sent to the PayPal site to complete payment you go to ShapeShift pay with your Altcoin, then your sent back to the retailers site to complete the transaction.

5. Gift cards
   Several gift card retailers take Bitcoin, so you can buy gift cards from over 10, 000 retailers worldwide because today’s economy and its businesses are global. Then you can use these gift cards to buy just about everything from groceries, haircuts, pet food, clothing and jewelry, as there are thousands of retailers who have gift cards. Here’s a list of 100 things ; goods and services that you can buy with cryptocurrency;
   https://steemit.com/steem/@shortsegments/places-you-can-buy-stuff-with-cryptocurrency

In addition to those methods above there are actually three different marketplaces similar to eBay and Amazon which allow you to buy things with cryptocurrency.

Three Marketplaces where you buy and sell stuff for cryptocurrency.

1. Open Bazaar:
   A franchise like setup where you download the store software and run a store from your computer. https://openbazaar.org/
   OpenBazaar is a different way to do online commerce. It’s a peer to peer application that doesn’t require middlemen, so no fees or restrictions.

2. Coin Payments:
   This is not a marketplace in the traditional sense, but I think it is a decentralized marketplace.
   If you already have a business or online selling point and want to accept crypto in addition to currency, this entity is a add on which is allows you to accept a multitude of cryptocurrencies including Steem, but also Bitcoin, Litecoin and Peercoin. In this way it changes existing marketplaces in marketplaces which accept cryptocurrency. https://www.coinpayments.net/supported-coins

3. FORRA- Buy and Sell goods using cryptocurrency👉https://forra.io/.
   Forra is a low fee ecommerce marketplaces that allows the purchase of physical goods with digital currencies. >By using a USD-pegged stable coin to eliminate volatility, Forra is able to reliably facilitate precise monetary transactions between buyers and sellers.<
   https://steemit.com/steem/@shortsegments/three-marketplaces-where-you-buy-and-sell-stuff-for-cryptocurrency

So Steemians that’s amazing number of places to utilize your cryptocurrency.

@shortsegments