[HOW TO] shop with Bitcoin at nearly any store in the US
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?
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.
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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!
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Consider yourself a lucky owner of a gift card, it's time to make some purchases!
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!
Let us not forget about the Bitcoin Creators, thank you guys for making it all possible!
Were getting there foks! Great;)
Hell yeah!
I saved this so I can learn the ways later. Thanks for all you do as always, you are appreciated. This post deserves 100$ damnit! Keep up the good work and tell Matt I said yo, still wishing I had an EOS sticker though hahaha
Thank you! I wish it was worth that much! The rewards pool has been shrinking, sadly!
He said hey :)
Will have to wait for the sticker a little longer, unfortunately haha
Yeah, it will recover. I did my part in the reward pool rape battle haha.. I took on top big of a problem, but I'm back now and things are good. I even got him to upvote you, he is at least upvoting other people than himself now.. So I call it a victory. Worth the post flags I got haha. Post more damnit! and I can wait longer, no problem!
Oh that is cool, thank you!!! Luckily steem price is a little higher now too that adds up to the payouts :)
I'm so new to this, I want to save it too! How do I do that...?
save the post to view later? bookmark it, or resteem it so it shows up on your blog.
Ok Folks I wanted to see if this information was pure BS, so i uploaded the app, transfered some Bitcoin to Mycelium wallet. I scrolled thru the list of to many places to get gift cards but decided on Chipotle. I bought $25 worth. It took like a few seconds and wala got my gift card. I proceeded to Chipotle got what I wanted showed my app card and then left. So did this work? HELL yea would I do it again you bet. The best thing is its a sort of under the radar system meaning if you dont like the NEOCONS prying on you this is one way to remain hidden. So I thank Kotturin for this information and its something that I will use over and over. I even see you can buy airline tickets too......
Yup, you can get whatever you want pretty much! I like Gyft and happy to hear that your experience was a positive one too :)
I started with gyft app to make my first purchase with steem. I made a steem to bitcoin transfer into bitpay and then bought a target card. Serious fees but quick and easy. Diapers and beer with Steem my friend.
Right on! I don't think there are any fees other than transaction fees, depends on the priority you set, I guess.
As an ex-Gyft users, I highly suggest using the eGifter app instead, they give points for Bitcoin purchases. This was something Gyft used to do early on but stopped, eGifter has also at one time used to support Litecoin and Dogecoin too, so I would see them accepting Steem directly over Gyft.
Oh that's neat! I am not familiar with this app, but I will check it out, thank you!
No problem. I think it has the same companies for the most part that Gyft has. Also they seem to give bonus even if it doesn't show on the site. The last at like 6 Amazon gift cards on egifter all got me bonus points even though the site didn't specify it was offering them. I got the app on my phone for on the go but I like the egifter website where you can see a little easier the bonus points they give you depending on what gift card you are buying.
Gyft has the cleaner looking app, but after they stopped offering Bitcoin bonus' I am not sure they are the company I want to be supporting with my BTC after they really got big because of Bitcoin and /r/Bitcoin and then dropped the incentive.
Sounds good to me, I will definitely look into egifter next time I shop for cards! What do the points get you though?
Grab the Android app now and just open it to compare it with Gyft, you'll see it doesn't look as slick, but all the working parts are there (or maybe you'll like the design of egifter better, I just can't lie, Gyft always looked slick). Points get you discounts on any of the next gift cards you buy with them. So let's say I spend $100 and Petco and they offered %6 points, the next card I would buy would be $6 off. The points go all over the place too, some cards give a pretty hefty bonus, versus others, like the Amazon ones I get, that do not say I should get points yet I have the past cards I have got this year.
I will! I should be able to have WiFi sometime today, I think, I'm in the mountains currently haha, and then I will get the application.
Sounds like that's a decent discount too! Gyft gives you discounts at particular stores once in a blue moon as well, I just remembered hahaha
Still a newbie trying to understand the whole process. I found your article very helpful,,,,,following
Thank you!!! I'm happy to be helpful!
I was thinking about using Gyft and it looks easy to do. Thanks for the tutorial!
I've used it for over a year now and didn't have any problems, I think it's pretty cool!
Spend my precious Bitcoins, I don't think so LOL 😂
Just in case you have to! :)
After reading your article, I am impressed with the content. Admittedly, I wasn't sure where you were going until you started talking about Gyft. This slipped my mind as I haven't looked at it in a while. I was only thinking of places that directly accepted Bitcoin as payment. As I continue to work with others in this field, I am finding commonality of purpose and the level of excitement as it grows. Soon we will find ourselves in our "self-controlled" economy.
There are a few places that accept bitcoin such as cardflip.com where you can get a discount buying a gift card and I think on overstock.com you can pay with bitcoin too.
Finally! I always found it hard to find something / somewhere to spend coins without some crazy shade or wild steps. Thank you!
Anytime! I thought it was a nice and fast way to make purchases!