All this talk of a crytocurrency is great and all but can you actually buy everyday stuff with it?

Turns out, yes!

The least geeky thing you can buy online with bitcoin is a race entry. Let me explain.

I recently entered for the Goss & Balfe Sapphire Coast Marathon. This is a running marathon race that takes place yearly on the South African South Coast. There is also a half marathon. The race is also a Comrades Marathon and Two Oceans qualifier which is a big selling point when it comes to our local races.

At the checkout the payment options were the usual suspects, i.e. Credit Card, EFT or wait for it.. bitcoin?! The payment processing service they used (PayFast - which is a South African payment processor) accepts this cryptocurrency as payment method. I decided to try this out as it's quite new around here to see it at checkout.

The race entry was R200(ZAR) ($14,84) which translated to 0.0032 btc at the time. I opened the bitcoin wallet on my phone, scanned their QR code on the site and clicked "Send". The transaction took a few minutes to verify which was the only slightly negative part of the experience.

I'm assuming there are some noobs reading this so here is a little background:

Bitcoin's increase in popularity has given rise to longer transaction times but there has been an improvement after the 1 September update to the protocol.

There was a small transaction fee added to the charge for PayFast to process the transaction. If you send bitcoin from one user to another directly there is usually no transaction fee or a very minimal fee if you want your transaction to be processed faster although, this can depend on the wallet application that you use.

There was a small transaction fee added to the charge for PayFast to process the transaction. If you send bitcoin from one user to another directly there is usually no transaction fee or a very minimal fee if you want your transaction to be processed faster although, this can depend on the wallet application that you use.

Why Bitcoin?

My assumptions are that PayFast keep the cryptocurrency for themselves and transfer the amount in South African Rand to the race organisers. This is a novel way to build up a crytocurrency reserve.

Let me know your thoughts below in the comments or your own experiences with bitcoin and buy stuff with cryptocurrencies online.