Stories abound around the net about Bitcoin bubbles, debates about whether it's an investment, and so much more. What I want to share today is something simple - Bitcoin in every day life.
I run a business in Bali that handles fairly large transactions and since many people haven't even heard of Bitcoin yet I still rely pretty heavily on banks. For those of you who don't know, in Indonesia if one of the 5 state-recognized religions has a holiday then the entire country gets a holiday - considering how many holidays there are in Balinese Hinduism and Javanese Islam it is possible to go days at a time without access to essential services - especially when you forget to track all of the holidays.
Long story short - there was a stretch of 4 days where it all went wrong; the banks were all closed, the ATMs near my location were all broken, I had forgotten to take out cash before the holiday streak, I hadn't stocked the fridge, and the electricity ran dry.
For four days I would have to eat at the tourist cafes, of which a few remain open all the time, and buy electricity plusa (credit) online. Luckily I live in Bali where many of the tourist cafes accept Bitcoin - many even give substantial discounts to those who pay in Bitcoin - so my food and morning coffee was covered. Buying electricity was more difficult - it turns out that if my particular bank is closed I can't buy electricity online - by the time I found this out it was quite dark, the convenience marts were all closed, and I had 5% battery left. Without air conditioning a tropical island can quickly seem like a bad place to live and it was an especially hot night. I was in a crunch, cashless, and unable to do much with my modern fiat money - then I remembered that you can now pay for plusa with bitcoin...Viola! the transaction went through and Satoshi said "let there be light!...and AC!" The best part was that after 4 days of living strictly on bitcoin I hadn't even come close to draining my gains and start vampirizing my principle - the purchasing power of bitcoin just goes up and up and up.
While I have left out a few details the moral of my story boils down to this: Don't forget that Bitcoin is incredibly convenient and actually does have a lot of power behind it. If the valuation of bitcoin doesn't convince you of it's power, just try it out for a while - who knows, it might just save you a few days of primitive living.
Originally Published at http://no-location.com