n the U.S. people generally use Bitcoin as an alternative investment, helping diversify a portfolio apart from stocks and bonds. You can also use Bitcoin to make purchases, but the number of vendors that accept the cryptocurrency is still limited. Big companies that accept Bitcoin include Overstock, AT&T and Twitch. You may also find that some small local retailers or certain websites take Bitcoin, but youโll have to do some digging. That said, PayPal has announced that it will enable cryptocurrency as a funding source for purchases this year, financing purchases by automatically converting crypto holdings to fiat currency for users. โThey have 346 million users and theyโre connected to 26 million merchants,โ says Spencer Montgomery, founder of Uinta Crypto Consulting. โItโs huge.โ
What Is Bitcoin?
Bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency that you can buy, sell and exchange directly, without an intermediary like a bank. Bitcoinโs creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, originally described the need for โan electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust.โ Each and every Bitcoin transaction thatโs ever been made exists on a public ledger accessible to everyone, making transactions hard to reverse and difficult to fake. Thatโs by design: Core to their decentralized nature, Bitcoins arenโt backed by the government or any issuing institution, and thereโs nothing to guarantee their value besides the proof baked in the heart of the system. โThe reason why itโs worth money is simply because we, as people, decided it has valueโsame as gold,โ says Anton Mozgovoy, co-founder & CEO of digital financial service company Holyheld.
