As part of my mission to promote Bitcoin to the masses I have decided to purchase things using only bitcoin and record the process.
Despite Bitcoin being used for a whole array of things it still has a stigma attached to it for it’s use on the dark web and in order to gain mainstream adoption this view has to be changed.
For my first Bitcoin purchase I have decided to buy a game on STEAM. Steam partnered up with BitPay in April 2016 and being that it is almost one year later to the day I thought that would make a great first purchase.
Step 1
The first step is to add your game to your cart like you would with any other purchase and chose whether you are buying the game for yourself or as a gift. I went with the “Purchase for myself” option.
Step 2
You are then taking to the payment method page, select the drop down box chose Bitcoin and click continue.
Step 3
The third step is similar to cart, but it has has a handy side panel with tips for paying in Bitcoin. It shows the price in your local currency, which is great but I personally feel it would be better if it integrated with BitPay to show the price in Bitcoin too.
Confirm you agree with their terms and click “Continue to BitPay”
Step 4
You will then be presented with the BitPay popup. It displays the price in your local currency as well as in Bitcoin and you are given 15 minutes to make the payment. This locks the price so you don’t have to worry about making the conversion right yourself.
You are presented with a QR code to scan or if you click the copy window you are given the address to send the Bitcoin over to. I clicked copy and did it manually as I was using my PC.
Step 5
Now you make the payment to above address, for this step I used the Electrum wallet. Head over to the send tab and the address we copied to the “Pay to” field and the amount of Bitcoin to the “Amount” field. Electrum automatically tells you have much the value is in your set currency.
I left the fee as the default that Electrum suggested which was around £0.40, this would make sure my payment would get confirmed within 2 blocks.
When you have made sure everything is correct hit the “Send” button.
Step 6
Almost instantly after hitting the send button the BitPay window confirmed my invoice had been paid and directed me back to the STEAM window to download my game.
This did make me wonder whether I had needed to do the fee that Electrum had suggested or not because BitPay accepted the payment without any confirmations.
To ensure the payment is received with no issues it is probably easier to pay the suggested fee but it is something that might be worth playing around with if you have knowledge of how the fee’s work.
Overview
It really is as easy as that, the whole process took minutes and I was extremely pleased with how simple STEAM and BitPay made the process. The pricing that BitPay suggested was accurate and not having to wait around for confirmations was a huge bonus.
If you have any ideas about what you would like me to purchase with Bitcoin for my next guide feel free to leave a comment and I will add it to my list.
