304 sats \ 0 replies \ @nout 15 Oct \ parent \ on: We don’t need more bitcoin merchants bitcoin
I think it's important to realize that if you want bitcoin to become the global currency, you will have to start spending it at some point, so why not start today.
Spending bitcoin is actually how you can directly support bitcoin.
There are couple approaches and tricks that can be useful to mitigate some of the worries that newbies may have:
- spend-and-replace: Buy stuff with bitcoin, but then immediately buy the same amount of bitcoin with fiat. This has nice side-effects: you are adding more value to bitcoin economy (hopefully the merchant keeps it) - NgU - and you are incentivizing the merchant to continue supporting bitcoin.
- use app like Strike that has "use fiat to pay any lightning invoice", which then means that you are not responsible for any taxable events, completely avoiding any headache around that. The benefits are the same as with spend-and-replace.
- join a community of bitcoin spenders. Every country now has a community of folks trying to add more merchants and spend everywhere. They organize in chat groups and fill things into https://btcmap.org/ (example is https://einundzwanzig.space/ )
I have been spending bitcoin literally every day recently for electronics, home supplies, etc. and it's starting to feel normal.