Who Accepts Bitcoin (Infographic)

The Bitcoin concept was a reasonably obscure one as little as three years ago, it now seems as though everyone has either gotten in on the action or knows someone that does.

But, whether you bought Bitcoin before it was the fashionable thing to do, or started on the scene a little later, at some stage, you are going to want to cash in. The question then becomes whether you spend the coins or sell them outright.

Spending the coins helps you get maximum value because you don’t have to pay exchange fees, but you do have to know where you can spend them. The good news is that there are a ton of places to do this now.

You can either spend the coins directly or through an intermediary. The infographic below will show you what sites you can use. With some sites, like Shopify, you can spend your coins directly with the vendor.

When shopping through an intermediary, you are actually purchasing a voucher to use on the site that does not accept coins directly. So, if you are shopping on Rakuten or Amazon, for example, you will need to use an intermediary service. When spending your coins, you still need to exercise the same amount of care that you normally would online, like making sure the site is legit before continuing. But, there are some additional steps that you will also need to take.

The first is to make sure the details of the transaction are completely correct. There is no option to reverse the transaction if you make an error, so double check that you have the right address to send the money to, and make sure that the amount is correct.

You also need to take into account that the transaction is not going to go into effect immediately. It needs to be verified first, and the time taken for this varies depending on how many transactions there are, and how many people are on the network.

So, Bitcoin does require you to be a bit more self-reliant in some regards. Once you get the hang of the network, though, you are all set.