More Than an Investment - Crypto in Everyday Life

For many people cryptocurrency means bitcoin, and bitcoin means investments and crazy returns or losses. For an increasing number of people though, crypto in everyday life is becoming a reality.

Crypto coffee

Teaching chemistry at the College of San Mateo in California, Jeff Flowers heads to Dianda’s cafe close to campus for his morning pastries and coffee.

He pays for both at the counter using a Bitcoin debit card.

“So what happened, I was able to buy a cup of coffee using cryptocurrency, using a BitPay debit card,” commented Jeff.

Jeff isn’t alone in using crypto in everyday life. He’s just one of a growing number of regular people who are seeing the benefits of using crypto as an actual, spendable currency.

San Francisco resident Marisha Sahay uses a Coinbase wallet to store her bitcoin, and just like Jeff, she uses her crypto to buy drinks at Stookey’s Club Moderne.

Stookey’s owner Aaron Cole believes that cryptocurrency is the future of currency, and commented that “I’m a big backer of it. It’s something that’s going to be pretty mainstream.”

Worldwide standard currency

Marisha Sahay hopes that beyond using crypto in everyday life, she will one day see it as the worldwide standard currency, completely removing the need for currency exchanges and all of the attributed costs and hassle –

“I go to India, and I have to change dollars into rupees and then back into dollars, so I lose a lot of money.”

Online retailers are also getting behind the idea of people using crypto in everyday life, with both Purse IO and overstock.com providing payment options that include cryptocurrency.

“We’re in the business of making it easier for people to purchase stuff on our site whether that’s credit cards or Paypal or cryptocurrency. That made sense to us,” commented overstock.com executive and board member Jonathan Johnson.

Johnson also claims his bonus last year was paid to him in bitcoin.

At the time of writing overstock.com expects to do somewhere in the region of USD 10 million in sales that will be paid in cryptocurrencies.

James Canton, a San Francisco based futurist, believes that “in 2018 we’re going to see a significant mainstreaming of cryptocurrency, particularly for purchasing more real things that people need.”

“You’ll be able to walk into grocery stores, be able to buy them for vacations and travel. You’ll be able to basically spend cryptocurrencies the way you spend dollars today.”