What Can I Use Bitcoins For?

Practically, almost any product or service that can be bought with dollars or other currencies can also be bought with bitcoins. On the other hand, the high volatility of bitcoins is a huge risk for some people that might want to use this cryptocurrency, but they are afraid about price differences. Even so, the characteristics of bitcoins make them perfect for internet payments:

1. Fast transactions

A bitcoin transaction is processed in 10-15 minutes. In case of a bank transfer, it might take hours or even days for the money to get from one account to the other. Some might say that PayPal or other ewallets are even faster. It is true, but there are other aspects that ewallets can’t give: privacy and smaller commissions.

2. Privacy

When you send bitcoins to a partner over the internet, the transaction will be registered in a blockchain. The list of transactions is public, and it can be verified on specialized websites. Only the identification number, the sum and the time are recorded. There is no way for somebody to find out from where the bitcoins come, and where they go. This is characteristic of bitcoins attracted many people. Well, some of those are interested about it because they can buy illegal goods with those, but the majority of bitcoin users are people that want to buy legal items and services, but which don’t want to disclose their identity. Porn and gambling websites might be immoral, but they are not illegal, so people that want to subscribe for those services can safely pay in bitcoins on the websites that accept this currency, knowing that their reputation will not be affected.

3. Smaller commissions

The average commission is 0.002 BTC for a transaction. It is significantly smaller compared with the PayPal or banking commissions. Moreover, you are not even obliged to pay it. By paying a commission, you “reserve” the computational power of a pool (or at least a part of it), to process your transaction faster. You even have the possibility not to pay the commission. In this case, you might need to wait two or even three days for your transaction to be processed. If you are not in a hurry, this might be the perfect opportunity to make money transactions with zero costs.

Of course, there are also disadvantages for using bitcoins, such as the possibility to lose them. If somebody steals your bitcoins, or if you delete the wallet files, it is impossible to recover those. As long as the bitcoin is not regulated, there is no central organism for arbitrage between divergent parts. In other words, you can’t complain if you lose or you are robbed by your bitcoins, simply because there is nobody to complain to.

Source by Stanculescu Mihai Bogdan