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Comment by yen223 | Hacker News Reader

To Bitcoin owners out there: out of curiosity, what kind of stuff do you buy using Bitcoin?

Donations - Bitcoin is great for it, and there are many organizations, small and big, that accept it. One of them (not mine): http://seansoutpost.com

eBay style trading - I once bought a $100 trillion Zimbabwe dollar bill for Bitcoin. Think of the irony - using hyper-deflatory currency to buy hyper-inflatory currency :)

In bigger cities you can buy drinks and food with it in certain pubs/restaurants.

There are many more legitimate uses for Bitcoin, and even if most people hoard most of their stash, when you have to pay for something many tend to spend their Bitcoins if they have the possibility.

given the crazy rise in prices I doubt anybody is spending any, apart from people who maybe want to, uhm, clean some money.

That's not really true, a lot of us more sensible people want to 'cash out' a little slowly as the price goes up, and what better way to cash out than actually spending the bitcoin on an actual product and supporting the economy? I'd be willing to bet that as people suddenly find themselves with tens or hundreds of bitcoins, and that they can buy a pizza for 0.05 BTC, they are quite open to the idea of receiving what is essentially free pizza. Sure, that pizza could be worth five pizzas tomorrow but you still have a decent chunk in bitcoins and if the whole thing plummets to earth then at least you got something delicious.

Hilariously this post highlights like, every reason why trading goods for BTC is a sucker's deal for the retailer.

How? The retailer gets exactly what they would if they had just asked for local currency, except maybe a little extra business.

My point was rather meta, but it was the choice of language. "Pizza effectively for free" - lots of things about Bitcoin seem to involve people hoping they get something effectively for free.

In the case of the price volatility for hoarding bitcoin while it rises, it underscores the deflationary nature of the currency - no economic value has been contributed by someone holding the BTC, but they've gotten richer regardless. Sitting around doing nothing with the BTC did not produce any economically valuable activity - it wasn't invested or used to finance starting that pizza place, for instance.

exactly my sentiments.

Food and beer, mostly. Handy when you run out of cash and don't want to walk to the ATM few blocks away :-)

Important to note that credit card processors charge not-insignificant fees to the merchants. So paying cash in BTC is a win for the customers who want to support that business.

There are bitcoin transaction fees (that can only increase if bitcoin gains more widespread usage), as well as exchange fees if merchants need to pay payroll, taxes, or buy supplies in their countries currency.

Oh, and the value frequently fluctuates double digit percentages in a day.

To be fair, credit card processors offer significant protections for consumers. I don't think we should discount the issue of fraud, especially given the recent Bitcoin heists.

Yes, but what about point of sale purchases? It's worth it for merchants to let you pay for beer or food using bitcoin.

Not compared to a stable currency like USD. If you did a ton of sales this week when the price is at an all time high, and when it comes to pay payroll next week and the value falls by half -- guess what, you're out of business.

Curry takeaways and PC games, also to send money to techie friends is much easier than even online banking.

Server and computer parts on amazon, loads of them

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