I’m sure I’m not alone in this boat….so let me start my story :)
Since I heard about Crypto Currency - Bitcoin & all other Altcoins - for more than 3 years now; I’m buying, selling different Crypto Currencies, exchanging between them, holding tokens from few good ICOs, cashing out part of my funds whenever I need some cash & holding part for long-term investment (hopefully) ;)
Since I discovered the Crypto Currency world, I didn’t spend any Crypto Currency in ‘real-life’ expenditure….except if we consider paying for some ‘cloud-mining’ services in Bitcoin is a real-life expenditure….By the way; though I know it’s not the core topic of my article here, but in case anyone would like to know; these ‘Cloud-mining’ services have been a total waste of money & time, at least for me; they did never break-even my initial investment (whether the life-time contracts or the annual ones)!
Anyway, back to our topic, a couple of months ago; I was thinking of adding some good certificate to the few ones I hold (Cisco CCIE since more than 12 years & OCSA ‘ONF Certified SDN Associate’ certificate recently) & because I always believe that the certification must prove & second what you’re really doing in your professional life; I chose to go for the CBP (Certified Bitcoin Professional) certificate through Crypto Currency Certification Consortium (https://cryptoconsortium.org/certifications/CBP)
I was really glad to know that the only payment option for the CBP exam is via Bitcoin; that was the first record in my ‘real-life’ Crypto expenditure. Since then I decided to look for other areas where I can spend some Crypto Currency there; but because I’m not living in Japan; that was really a challenging exercise for me.
I live in a nice country but the Crypto Currency isn’t yet regulated or formalized here.
I live in one of the crowded cities worldwide, I have my own car but honestly; I hate driving in the city, so I’m a loyal customer of Uber that I usually use between 10-15 times a week (twice a day on the average)….I usually pay for my Uber rides using my Credit Card…So a crazy idea jumped into my mind; what if I issue a virtual Crypto Debit card & use it to pay for my Uber rides?
Wait! Why you choose the virtual Debit Card option? (That’ll definitely be your question); well; the answer is simple; my country isn’t yet on the list of countries where the different Crypto Card companies can issue & ship physical real cards to :(
There are lots of Crypto Debit Card companies out there but only few of them worked well for me.
I issued my virtual Debit Card in few seconds, loaded around $5 (its equivalent in BTC) to it, installed the Card App over my phone to monitor the balance & transactions, filled in the details of the card into the Uber App as the new payment method & ordered my trip……& here we go!! WOW
What other areas of expenditure do you recommend? Please share your stories