In recent months, I have been attending more and more bitcoin meetups where people are actually spending their Bitcoin and actually growing the bitcoin circular economy. Obviously it’s important to spend within your means and and have a long term hodl stack, but building an entire economic framework outside of the legacy financial system is also important if bitcoin is ever going to become a global peer-to-peer electronic cash system.

Growing The Bitcoin Circular Economy

In order for bitcoin to become the global borderless money of the world, we all need to be doing whatever we can to grow the bitcoin circular economy. This is actually really simple. All you have to do is accept bitcoin and spend bitcoin. Once enough of us are both accepting bitcoin as payment for goods and services and then spending bitcoin with other vendors and merchants who accept bitcoin, we will have successfully built an entire economic framework outside of the legacy financial system.

For those of us who want to use bitcoin as privately as we possibly can, using CoinJoin before we spend will increase on-chain privacy so much that it will become impossible to know who is in control of which address balances.

Here’s are just some of the ways that we can grow the bitcoin circular economy.

Accept Bitcoin

Growing the bitcoin circular economy starts with people who accept bitcoin as payment. In order for anyone to actually be able to spend their bitcoin as money, we need merchants, vendors, shops, websites, etc. to actually accept bitcoin. This is easier said than done because until the price of bitcoin reaches new heights, most businesses don’t come to bitcoiners asking how to accept bitcoin. Instead, it is almost always that bitcoiners plead with business to accept bitcoin which almost always ends up being more of a problem for the business owner than they want to deal with because they haven’t truly been orange pilled yet.

While any individual with a bitcoin wallet probably already accepts bitcoin as payment via their bitcoin wallet, there are a number of different ways that businesses of all types can accept bitcoin both at brick-and-mortar locations and online.

Accept Bitcoin Peer-To-Peer

Accepting bitcoin amongst your peers for any day to day transactions is a great way to build the bitcoin circular economy while you prepare yourself for larger payments in the future. These can be simple payments amongst friends for things like a gas money, a pint of beer at your local pub, splitting the bill at a restaurant, repayment for a concert ticket, or just about anything else that you can think of for smaller peer-to-peer payments.

If Alice and Bob went to a concert and Alice paid for the tickets, Bob can repay Alice with bitcoin instead of fiat.

To accept bitcoin for face to face transactions amongst your peers, it probably makes the most sense to use a lightning wallet for instant settlement and low fees. If you want to accept on-chain bitcoin payments amongst your friends, all you need is a wallet that accepts on chain payments. Here are the best bitcoin-only wallets for accepting both on-chain payments and lightning payments.

Accept Bitcoin At Brick & Mortar Shops

Getting brick and mortar shops to accept bitcoin is probably going to be one of the most important steps to build the bitcoin circular economy because people still go out into the real world to spend money on things like groceries, shopping, health products, clothing, home improvement materials, eating out, and a multitude of other things.

If you know of a brick and mortar store that already accepts bitcoin, you can add them to the BTC Map to let others know about that business.

If you would like to get more businesses to accept bitcoin, you can help them to set up their own point of sale for their first bitcoin payments using Breeze wallet. If they’re ready for some more robust tools, you can help get them set up with BTCPay Server or run one in the cloud with Voltage.

As the price continues to hit new highs every halving cycle, it brings a wave of new merchants as well. With each new all-time high, bitcoiners don’t need to do much to convince business to accept bitcoin. Business owners come to us begging us to help them to setup whatever is necessary to accept bitcoin payments. Naturally, we will be ready and waiting with all of the best bitcoin resources available to onboard them to the future of money.

Accept Bitcoin Online

Since bitcoin is a peer-to-peer electronic cash system, it’s naturally a perfect fit to grow the bitcoin circular economy online. It’s probably also the easiest way to begin accepting bitcoin payments with the least amount of overhead. Some of these methods will require some technical knowhow but luckily there’s a growing number of services that will take care of all of the back-end infrastructure if you don’t want to setup and maintain all of that yourself.

BTCPay Server is the single best way to accept bitcoin payments without any third party intermediaries. It requires some technical knowhow to set up your own server but if that doesn’t interest you, there are service providers that will run a BTCPay server for you for a small fee.

Voltage is one of the services that will run a BTCPay server on your behalf so you can focus on the more important things like running your actual business. Voltage will handle all of the back-end infrastructure so that you or any other merchant can accept bitcoin payments directly to their wallet without Voltage ever taking any custody of your bitcoin. If you are looking for the best way to accept bitcoin with BTCPay Server but without all of the technical expertise, then Voltage is the best in the business.

Nodeless is a plug-and-play service to enable on-chain and lightning bitcoin payments with minimal fees. They integrate with WooCommerce & PrestaShop and take care of all of the lightning routing fees, on-chain fees, and hosting fees for a flat fee of 100 sats + 1% of each transaction.

Magic Webstore is a simple website for building your own webstore on Nostr. You don’t need need any personal information to set up your own store in minutes and all payments go directly to your bitcoin wallet. If you are just experimenting with online bitcoin sales, this is a great platform to learn on until you’re ready to graduate to a bigger store with one of the resources mentioned above.

Nostr Market is another online marketplace built on Nostr that is for smaller shops and learning how to accept bitcoin payments for products online. Nostr market is young and requires some technical knowhow to get set up but it could potentially grow into a robust online community of people all selling products for bitcoin using the Nostr protocol.

 

CoinJoin Your Bitcoin

After you’ve accepted any bitcoin payments, it’s always a good idea to practice good privacy and CoinJoin to make it impossible for third parties to know with 100% certainty where bitcoin comes from and where it goes to. When you use CoinJoin, not only do you increase your own privacy but you also increase the privacy of other bitcoin users because it makes it more difficult to follow the flow of money on the blockchain.

After you have accepted bitcoin as payment and then CoinJoined it to obfuscate who controls which address, the final step to grow the bitcoin circular economy is is to spend bitcoin.

Spend Bitcoin

Now comes the important part of growing the bitcoin circular economy and that is spending bitcoin as peer-to-peer electronic cash. You can spend bitcoin online and at brick-and-mortar locations that already accept bitcoin but for some stores that don’t yet accept bitcoin directly, you can buy gift cards for hundreds of merchants.

Spending Bitcoin In Person

Spending bitcoin in person is an important part of growing bitcoins circular economy within your own local network of influence. This can be as simple as finding a local bitcoin meetup at a business that accepts bitcoin. These seem to be popular at restaurants and pubs because they are a naturally social environment.

BTC Map is the best resource for finding all of the brick and mortar shops that accept bitcoin around the world.

 

Spending Bitcoin Online

Spending bitcoin online is a the easiest way to build the bitcoin circular economy because there are way more online retailers that accept Bitcoin than there are brick-and-mortar stores. Here is a list of just some of the best platforms to spend bitcoin online.

Satmap is an online repository of online businesses that accept bitcoin for payment. Satmap is designed to help Bitcoiners find and connect with businesses that accept Bitcoin payments, both locally and globally.

BitList is the professional services marketplace that helps you find goods and services offered by and for Bitcoiners.

Plebeian Market is a free open source marketplace where people can come together to buy and sell anything they want using the Nostr protocol. Since the entire marketplace runs on Nostr, there is no centralized control and you can sell anything on the platform.

Satoshi Store is one of the largest online retailers of bitcoin related products. If you are looking for any sort of bitcoin related products, be sure to check out their massive selection.

Reasons To Use Bitcoin offers a number of t shirt designs that help new users to better understand all of the reasons to use bitcoin. If you are looking for a simple way to grow the bitcoin circular economy and start some great conversations, these shirts are for you.

 

Spending Bitcoin On Gift Cards

Until the bitcoin circular economy is big enough for us to spend bitcoin directly on goods and services that we need and want, we can to use some other services to buy gift cards at some of the world’s largest retailers.

The Bitcoin Company is an online marketplace to buy discounted gift cards with bitcoin from dozens of merchants . One feature that sets The Bitcoin Company apart from other bitcoin-based gift card retailers is the ability to purchase a VISA gift card that can be loaded onto Apple pay for spending anywhere Visa is accepted.

BitRefill is a platform that enables users to purchase gift cards and mobile phone refills using bitcoin. What separates Bitrefill from other bitcoin based gift card vendors is the ability for their users to purchase mobile phone refill cards from more than a dozen service providers.

Fold (Affiliate) is a mobile application that allows users to earn bitcoin when they make purchases at popular retailers as well as spend bitcoin to buy gift cards from those same retailers. If you are looking for a simple way to spend bitcoin online and at select retail locations, Fold is worth looking into.

 

Spend & Replenish

Obviously accepting bitcoin as payment is the best way to stack sats but not everybody has access to a constant flow of customers who are willing to spend their precious bitcoin. If you are doing whatever you can to spend bitcoin to grow the bitcoin circular economy, then you will need to either buy more bitcoin or mine it to ensure that you have a constant supply of fresh sats.

When you spend and replenish like this, you push new bitcoin out into the economy and also support the price of bitcoin every time you fill an open order on a bitcoin exchange.

If you want to continuously grow your own local bitcoin economy, then it’s important to buy more bitcoin as needed so you always have a fresh supply of bitcoin to keep things moving.

Final Thoughts

Growing the bitcoin circular economy is as simple as accepting bitcoin as payment and spending with others who do the same. There are a number of ways that we can make that happen.

The easiest way to get started is to download a free lightning wallet for accepting instant bitcoin payments with the lowest fees and using it for peer-to-peer bitcoin payments amongst your personal network of friends and family.

If you want to accept bitcoin at your brick-and-mortar business (or know someone else who does), setting up a full point-of-sale system and getting listed on the BTC Map will help bitcoiners find your physical location and drive new sales.

Anyone with an online business can begin accepting bitcoin payments both on-chain by setting up their own dedicated BTCPay server or hire a third party to handle the technical details for them. Not only does this give bitcoiners new places to spend their bitcoin, it also prevents fraudulent payments and reduces payment processor fees.

To practice good privacy and make it more difficult for any potential attackers to know how much bitcoin you have, adding a layer of CoinJoin between when you accept and spend makes it more difficult for anyone else to know for sure who owns which bitcoin address. The more people who use CoinJoin, the stronger and more private the bitcoin circular economy becomes.

Finally, if you are really passionate about growing the bitcoin circular economy while also helping to support the price of bitcoin, be sure to spend and replenish to make sure that you keep building your own stack while supplying the bitcoin economy with plenty of sats.

 
If enough of us are taking these steps mentioned above, then it is only a matter of time before we have a thriving network of bitcoiners actively building a healthy bitcoin economy that operates completely outside of the legacy financial system.

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