I’ve had my eye on OpenBazaar for quite a while now and at the start of April of this year (2016) it went live. You should check it out, but a short summary would be that it’s a distributed on-line marketplace. It uses bitcoin for it’s currency. Anyone can join the network and sell their products on-line for free. The software is free, setting up a shop is free, accepting payments are free. …

At this point I’ve bought lots of things on-line with Bitcoin, but I have not been able to buy anything locally (in Minneapolis MN) until now. I was surprised to find one of my “go to” Thai restaurants Krungthep got a new (to me) website, that accepts Bitcoin. It looks like they use Menufy and it looks like there are several restaurants in the area I can also order from using Bitcoin. …

When I tell people about bitcoin and I want to give an example of something bitcoins are good for today I usually use the example of international money transfers. Recently I successfully transferred some money to my sister (about $50), who is currently living in South Korea. It was not exactly the smoothest experience ever but I think it demonstrates a real opportunity. Here’s how we did it. About a month and half ago I asked my sister if she’d be willing to give this a try. …

It’s been over a year since I last write about my experiences with bit coins. I have not been able to explore the world of crypto currency as much as I would have liked but I have managed a few things. Overall though, it’s been very interesting to see how Bitcoin is becoming more and more mainstream all the time. If you watch closely it seems super slow but if you take a step back, it’s pretty amazing how fast it’s been. …