Cryptocurrency is the latest trend in the financial world and its popularity is soaring – most people will be familiar with the original crytpocoin, bitcoin; which has seen huge surges and dips in its value since its birth. These digital currencies are seen by many as volatile investments and high risk gambles but there are many unknown and valuable uses for these decentralized electronic currencies.
Let’s take a look at 5 of the latest and most innovative ways to use cryptocurrency.
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Use it to Travel the World
Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) can be used for anything from booking flights, to accommodation and even taking cash out at international ATM’s.
Established travel agents such as Cheapair (www.cheapair.com) and Destinia (www.destinia.com) now accept payments with popular cryptocurrencies.
Now that your flight is booked you obviously need a place to stay, if you wish to use your bitcoin wallet you can book accommodation via Cryptocribs (www.cryptocribs.net).
Such is the rise in cryptocurrency all over the world, there are now specialist bitcoin ATM machines internationally which you can convert you digital balance in to the local currency to spend whilst you travel.
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Forget the World, Travel to Space!
Virgin Galactic – Richard Branson’s space travel company who have yet to successfully launch a commercial space flight have announced that you can now pay with Bitcoin if you want to reserve a seat on their service.
The cost – a cool $250,000 per ticket! Internet entrepreneurs and Cryptocurrency enthusiasts Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss have already signed up to be some of the first passengers, and you guessed it, they used Bitcoin to fund the tickets.
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Get an Education
The Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Switzerland has announced that it will accept tuition fees in Bitcoin. This University does have a specialty for finance and economics based courses and they stated it would further help them to gain knowledge and develop experience and grow in this unique area of finance.
“When a student pays by Bitcoin to the University they do not hold the Bitcoin or take possession of it – they place that responsibility with Bitcoin Suisse AG who are a Swiss processing firm,” explains Tony Hill, a tech blogger at Australia2write and NextCoursework. They then convert the Bitcoin to Swiss Francs for the university. There is the potential for loss of revenue when it is converted to traditional money – however this risk is taken by the processing firm.
Germany, Cyprus and America all have universities which will accept Bitcoin and there is also a growing trend of Universities offering courses to expand the education of this topic and increase the global understanding.
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Donate to Charity
Being a refugee is dangerous, upsetting and provides a lack of certainty for the future – having to leave home and not knowing what the future holds causes all sorts of worry and stress. Lack of the basic simple needs required to survive is often a common problem faced by refugees the world over. Imagine not having clothing, clean water or food.
Now, following a successful trial in 2017 there has been one of the largest-ever implementations of the Ethereum blockchain for a charitable cause to help aid refugees.
Cryptocurrency vouchers were provided to Syrian refugees, so that they could exchange them at participating local markets for goods. As well as this being a good deed which helped thousands in need it was also implemented so that all transactions could be traced and proven what the money was used for.
”Transactions for 10,000 people were authenticated during the trials and they were used to buy food stuffs such as pasta, lentil and olive oil. The platform which implemented the trial is known as Parity Technologies – which was created by the Ethereum creator Gavin Wood and big data company Datarella,” says Daniel Olive, a crypto expert analyst at Britstudent and Writemyx.
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Low Cost Money Transfers
Transferring traditional currency, and high value amounts can often take time and also cost a significant fee depending on the amount being transferred.
Cryptocurrency is probably best known for its ability to transfer at high speed and with a low cost. There has been a recorded $99 million litecoin (LTC) transaction which took only two and a half minutes to process and cost the sender only $0.40 in transaction fees.
This makes cryptocurrency the perfect method for international money transfer which in the past could have been a more expensive and lengthy task.
In conclusion – cryptocurrency remains in its infancy as a financial method, however due to its features of being decentralised, easily traced and versatile its appeal is increasing globally to a wider audience than before and for its widest range of uses to date.
Edward Smith is a tech blogger at AcademicBrits and PhD Kingdom academic services. He covers cryptocurrencies. Ed also teaches business writing at Academic Paper Help.
