At the end of August, online news source Forbes published an article entitled “Bitcoin Is The New ‘Gold’”. Within the article, author Panos Mourdoukoutas explains that gold simply isn’t attracting the attention that it used to as bitcoin has taken its place when it comes to security during times of financial uncertainty. The cryptocurrency has increased in value more than ten times over the last twelve months alone, while SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) continue to shrink.
Needless to say, digital currency is well and truly experiencing a renaissance. After the initial excitement when bitcoin went public in 2009, it’s safe to say that the cryptocurrency slowly began to wane in popularity and remained an eclectic payment method for many years. However, due to bitcoin’s blossoming success, more businesses and industries are beginning to accept it. Today, we thought we’d look at a few of the most recent bitcoin adopters.
Schools
Back in June, two Montessori Schools situated in the Flatiron and SoHo areas of Manhattan began allowing parents to pay for tuition using bitcoin, ether and litecoin. According to cryptocurrency website CoinDesk, tuition at the private preschools can be as much as $30,950 a year, which is equal to about 12.3 BTC currently.
Co-founder and chairman of the two preschools, Marco Ciocco, informed CoinDesk that the process of allowing cryptocurrency payments began over a year ago after numerous parents requested it. “As a forward-thinking administration, we like to stay ahead of the curve,” Ciocco said, “and would not be surprised if the percentage of tuition paid in digital currencies continue to grow every year.”
Casinos
Although the iGaming industry was one of the first successful businesses to take bitcoin on, there are more bitcoin-based online casinos popping up all the time. Like more traditional cash and card payment methods used online, cryptocurrency is simply used at online casinos to make deposits and withdrawals. However, the key difference is that bitcoin is far easier, faster and more secure than its traditional currency counterparts.
As there are currently so many online bitcoin-based casinos, it’s difficult to select just one but there are plenty of options and much more information about how they work at Bitcasino here. For instance, Bitcasino explains that online casinos adopting alternative payments allow transactions to take place for free. Usually, most sites simply require a registration name and limited access to your cryptocurrency wallet and voila: instant access to games, promotions and bonuses.
Charities
Finally, throughout 2017, more charities have started accepting bitcoin donations. One such charity is Fidelity Charitable, the non-profit connected to mutual fund company Fidelity Investments. Already, almost $9 million has been donated to Fidelity in bitcoin during 2017, proving that including cryptocurrencies as an option truly expanded the possible donor pool.
Of course, Fidelity Charitable wasn’t the first charity to start accepting bitcoin. The Water Project, Save The Children and TunaPanda are just some of the other successful charities that also help others through bitcoin donations.
Right now, we are in the midst of the cryptocurrency evolution with more businesses hinting towards bitcoin payments every day. Uber, Lush and many other companies have started working on ways to integrate alternative payment methods into their business strategy. For now, we will simply have to wait and see where bitcoin goes over the next few years.