Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Litecoin have been in the news a lot in recent times, mainly because of their price swings. However, you might not have noticed that the list of things you can now do with these coins is getting longer. Here are a few examples.
Just About Anything in Bitcoin Beach, El Salvador
El Salvador hit the headlines across the world in 2021, when it became the first country to make Bitcoin legal tender. You might have thought that it was some sort of marketing gimmick but the government, led by President and crypto enthusiast Nayib Bukele, has spent millions of dollars into putting the infrastructure in place for this to happen. There are a couple of hundred crypto ATMs across the country, and all businesses are obliged to accept Bitcoin unless they have a good reason not to do so.
It all began in Bitcoin Beach, a surfing area around the village of El Zonte. American expat Mike Peterson created this initiative when the region received a massive donation of BTC in 2019. The donor remained anonymous, but stipulated that they wanted the money to remain in BTC rather than get converted into dollars.
Subscribe to Twitch and Play Online Games
It was no surprise to see that video game sellers were among the earliest companies to accept Bitcoin for payment, as many people in this industry were among the early Bitcoin adopters. But you might not have realized that you can use Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash to pay for subscriptions on Twitch. This option was removed in 2019 and then added back on again later the same year.
Cryptocurrency acceptance is also becoming more common in online casinos, alongside traditional payment methods like PayPal and Visa. This summary of the best online casino bonuses in Thailand shows that Bitcoin deposits are accepted at online casinos such as Happy Luke and Lucky Days. These sites offer welcome bonuses that can climb as high as 300% of your first deposit in some cases. The minimum deposit and the main terms & conditions are among the key points to check before proceeding.
Pay for Sports Tickets and Merchandise
The big sports teams have been quite slow off the mark in letting their fans use cryptocurrencies. However, there are now signs that this is changing. In the US, the Miami Dolphins announced 2019 a partnership with the foundation behind Litecoin. This meant that their fans could start using crypto to pay for tickets in their 50/50 raffle, leading to a 20% increase in profits from it in the first few months.
In the same year, the Dallas Mavericks announced that they would be accepting Bitcoin for tickets and merchandise. They went one step further in 2021, by teaming up with a crypto brokerage called Voyager Digital. This five-year deal is expected to introduce many Mavericks fans to the concept of buying and selling crypto.
The idea has also reached Europe, where Portuguese soccer club Benfica became one of the first European teams to accept BTC for match tickets and also for merchandise. In the UK, it’s been rumored that Liverpool may become the first team in the English Premier League to use a crypto shirt sponsor. Meanwhile, several teams have signed up to a fan engagement platform using NFTs known as fan tokens.
Buy a Ticket to Space
In 2021, Sir Richard Branson announced to the world that his Virgin Galactic space flights would accept Bitcoin payments. He said that this is something they wanted to offer because Virgin is a company that is looking into the future in the same way as Bitcoin.
At the same time, Branson confirmed that they had already sold their first ticket on a Bitcoin purchase. It was bought by a female flight attendant living in Hawaii. Tickets cost $250,000 at that time, and Branson pointed out that payments in BTC would be transferred into US dollars so that a fixed price could be established in case the person has to cancel their space trip and the Bitcoin price varied before then.
It seems certain that the list of cool things we can do with cryptocurrencies is going to continue to grow. However, for the moment the things we’ve looked at here will hopefully give you some interesting ideas on how to use your digital money to do something different.
