From the Merchants Point of View

Running this site and others I have interviewed many ethnobotanical product vendors. There are a few reasons why bitcoin is used and they revolve around how Credit Cards Companies and Paypal work. It is very hard to maintain an ethnobotanical credit card merchant account. In most cases a account will only last 3-6 months depending on how long until they get shut down through some sort of TOS violation.

The reason is generally it is seen as a “high risk” business and banks are very risk adverse in this sense.

I’ve heard countless stories of vendors who have had in excess of $10,000 stolen from them by Paypal or the Credit Card companies when the account is closed. This is the main reason for wanting another payment option. Before Bitcoin the only option was sending cash in the international mail or a international bank transfer.

Neither of those options are good and Bitcoin is much better. The money goes straight into the merchants account and doesn’t need to go through the central banks.

From My Point of View as a Consumer

Bitcoin makes international money transfers which used to take 5-15 days now take under 5 minutes. It’s amazing and I’ll never go back. I’ll admit that signing up was a pain in the ass but not as bad as talking to the bank teller and getting a wire transfer. Opposed to just sending cashing in the mail it also has a receipt that shows you paid which is nice.

Well How Do I Even Pay with Bitcoin?

Getting Bitcoins isn’t as hard as you might think one place you can go to get them is coinbase. Coinbase makes it easy to buy and sell Bitcoins. You have to jump through some hoops the first time but after that you can use your credit card transfers anywhere in the world only take seconds.

They also have a referral program so that if you verify your account you get $5 and so do I. This works out great for both of us 🙂 You can get your free $5 here. Here is a bit more about what the process looks like.

There are basically 5 steps.

Step 1 – Fill out name, email address, and a password you’d like to use

Step 2 – Verify your Email address

 Step 3 – Verify your phone number for a second authentication method.

Step 4 – After that you will link your bank account by providing account and routing numbers like with a money transfer or when you first linked your Paypal account. This step is required by law to stop money laundering apparently?

Step 5 – Buy some bitcoin however you’d like with a credit card or bank transfer. After all of this you will get your free $5 worth of bitcoin and so will I.

It probably sounds like a lot of trouble but after you start using bitcoin if you do many international money transfers via wire or cash you will NEVER go back. I know I won’t.

Click Here if you’re ready to give it a try.