"They" said nobody uses Bitcoin.
Back at the end of December I received an invoice Bullion Star for my overseas precious metals storage. You might be asking, why are you storing precious metals overseas or how are you doing it? For that, you can learn more here.
When I initially got the invoice I knew it wasn't due for a few weeks so I could push it off for a few weeks. Well, that sucker's due date is 1/29/2018. As of 1/25/2018 there was no plan in place about how to take of this invoice. After discussing with Bullion Start about the best way to pay for it, I had a 5 options or so I thought.
Option 1
Purchase some more metals to be stored there and wire them an additional $100 or so for the storage fees that was due.
I did not want to purchase any more metals at the moment as I am saving up for the 2018 Steem Silver Round. So this option was thrown out the window
Option 2
Send a wire with the funds to Bullion Star.
The fee for sending an international wire is like $40 plus the $10 or so of fees I need to cover on their end. The invoice was only for $100 and I wasn't okay with spending an extra 50% just to send the funds to them. This is what really got me irked with how inefficient the current banking system is. Why does it take $40+ and sometimes 1-2 days to send money to another country. {A sign of good things to come though :D} So this option was thrown out the window
Option 3
Sell some of my precious metals and use the proceeds to pay the storage fees
Bullion Star suggested this to me over email and I was a little upset. I did not ever think of this as a viable option. At current prices, one should not be a seller of the metals unless a dire situation arises. This was not a dire situation. So this option was thrown out the window
Option 4
Sell all of my precious metals and get a check sent
After hearing about the option listed above I wasn't too happy that they were encouraging me to sell the metals. This would lower the fees I would be responsible to them, but they would be buying back the metal a little under spot and would be able to sell it to someone a little over spot giving them a gain, albeit small. I seriously considered this, but then I was reminded of my mantra mentioned above. "At current prices, one should not be a seller of the metals unless a dire situation arises. This was not a dire situation." So this option was thrown out the window
Option 5
Get the metals delivered by courier
Bullion Star has the ability to deliver the metals right to you, anywhere you are in the world! How darn cool is that! But, there is a fee for that and for good reason! When I looked at the price to send the bullion overseas I didn't deem it worth it at this time. I then thought back to Option 4, which brought me back to Option 3, none of which I wanted to do. So this option was thrown out the window
The Ultimate Option
You're probably thinking, you mentioned there only being 5 options, what are you talking about "The Ultimate Option"? This is because this option did not come into my mind until I went outside a took a jog around the block. What was this new option?
Paying with Bitcoin
I remember Bullion Start accepted BTC for there orders so I figured it would be worth it to ask them and see if they would accept it for the storage fees. I mean, why wouldn't they? I emailed them and within minutes they got back with me and that they would gladly accept Bitcoin for the invoice, but did not currently accept other cryptocurrencies.
This was completely fine with me! I could scrounge up some BTC and send it to them! Hopefully the transaction fees wouldn't be too high as they were recently I thought.
Later in the day Bullion Star sent another invoice, this time in BTC. I owed them .007732 BTC for the storage fees. I didn't think this was too bad since I have the diversification of it being overseas. At the time, Bitcoin was near the high of the day, somewhere above $11,500 so this was right around $90 or so.
I had a little extra BTC stored on Poloniex, so I would just send it directly from there since their fees were cheaper than Bittrex and a few other exchanges I checked. The fee from Poloniex was 0.0005 BTC. At current prices that was a little over $5 for the transaction. This is a hell of lot cheaper than the wire price + the hassle of filling out the paper correctly at the bank and allowed me to send this from the comforts of my own home when the banks were CLOSED!
After I sent the funds from Poloniex, I saw the transaction ID and began tracking it. I went a filled my cup of water and brushed my teeth. When I came back there was 1 of the 6 confirmations complete. I decided it was time to go to bed. When I woke up in the morning, I received an email from Bullion Star with a "Paid" status for the invoice.
This process was seamless and will be how I will pay for the future invoices. As more companies opt in to cryptocurrencies, I will continue to use it as the preferred method of payment!