06-08-2015, 04:51 AM
(06-08-2015, 04:08 AM)OdinYggd Wrote:(06-08-2015, 12:32 AM)Battle Bee Wrote: Not Bitcoin.
A credit card/bank account in general.
Right, but I mentioned bitcoin because bitcoin allows you to send money to anyone in real life or online without requiring a bank account or credit card or any of that.
You just run an app on your PC or phone that serves as a bitcoin wallet, allowing you to send and recieve them as easily as you would pay someone using cash.
The only tricky part for people without the ability to buy things online is getting some bitcoin. It is possible to buy them in person if you know somebody who has them for sale, or can buy them online using their account for you.
Once you have them though, you send a payment by copypasting the address to send the payment to and it will get there all by itself for perhaps $0.02 in fees, compared to the several dollars in fees you pay using paypal or a major credit card.
Its a really incredible technology that sadly is taking a long time to catch on. But already you can buy things online from a growing number of stores like Newegg using them, and there's resturaunts and the like where you can buy coffee or lunch for yourself using it as well.
For instance here's one of my bitcoin addresses. You can make as many of these as you want, and most wallets let you label them to make it easy to keep track of who you have sent money to or gotten money from. 16Bgxkcam8WnoWvwkRZUcnn4HfCjg5n2He
And one of the neatest things is that you can see how much money an address has in it, but you can't take that money out of it unless it belongs to you. No more of that stealing people's account numbers nonsense that goes on with the banks.
The problem with bitcoin is that it's a tremendous pain in the arse for anyone who isn't using bitcoin. It's not a preferred currency because the value with respect to real money fluctuates wildly (though it is stabilising) and converting from bitcoin to real money only happens through third party services, some of which can be pretty shady. I think there's also a somewhat lengthy turnaround on bitcoin to real money or vice versa.
It is catching on slowly but I think at present it's hardly worth the effort.