Hi everybody,
Earlier this year, as I wanted to purchase a new lens for my camera, I was wondering how I could buy it using my bitcoins. As I mentioned in previous posts, I live in France and so far bitcoin has a really low adoption rate. (Compared to most of its European neighbors, there is almost no way to spend bitcoin :o )
Actually I knew one computer shop accepting bitcoin but their pricing was way too high and they didn't sell camera equipment at all.
So after searching a little while on the net for a shop accepting bitcoins, delivering to France at a competitive rate or an alternative, I found that very interesting UK company GiftOff
GitfOff allows you to purchase gift cards using a various choice of altcoins (36 different altcoins, I hope Steem dollars will be added soon ) from various online shop and most particularly Amazon gift card.
Here a screenshot of the currency page showing some of the currencies which are accepted. GiftOff use the ShapeShift exchange for the altcoin and BitPay for bitcoins
So how does it work:
You need first to register, actually giving an address email and setting a password is enough.
Then you can select your country (European country only for the moment) and proceed to the page to select the gift card you want to purchase:
Once you have chosen the card, Amazon.fr Chéque Cadeaux (well the Amazon gift card to purchase with amazon france, as I am in France, so I can get free delivery as well). You can credit the card with an amount between 10 and 1000 euros:
Pressing continue will send you to the familiar BitPay api, where you will have a certain amount to send the bitcoins to the given address.
Once the transaction completed, you will be able to get the serial number of the gift card from your dashboard:
Now you will just need to copy and paste on amazon website (amazon france in this example) so you can credit your account and "voilà" you are ready to purchase whatever you like from Amazon :)
So I used that site a few times to purchase from Amazon.fr and it works perfectly, it usually takes about a half hour to get the Amazon card. The length of the process is mainly due to the validation of the transaction on the bitcoin network.
As I said, it is also possible to use other cryptocurrencies (I haven't tried it yet). For the moment, Steem hasn't been implemented, but it is quite simple to change your Steem to bitcoin or to any other altcoin and purchase the giftcard.
Something which should be mentioned is that there is no commission fee: meaning the service is free :)
For the moment, that service is available only in Europe and quite frankly I am quite happy to have found that service otherwise the other option(s) to use my bitcoins around weren't so advantageous.
If you'd like to try that service please use my referral link https://giftoff.com/affiliate/93ebb0
Hope you enjoyed that little presentation of one of the rare service accessible from France and Europe and which doesn't come from some shaddy places (always be careful though) and I hope you will find it useful.
Djm34