Jesse Angle, Chris Kantola, and Paul Harrison were jobless and homeless for much of the past year, but thanks in part to Bitcoin – the world's most popular digital currency – they never went without food.

Between April and September, while living on the streets of Pensacola, Florida, they used their laptops and smartphones to collect a total of about four or five bitcoins. Some of it arrived through donations. Some of it came from rather unsophisticated online services that dole out tiny fractions of the digital currency if you spend some time looking at videos and ads. And over the course of the summer, this free money bought them a pretty steady supply of pizza and chicken tenders.

>'The $600 we spent would now be worth $6,000. I wish we had gone hungry' Jesse Angle

Today, after finding a house they can rent with a little help from the government, the trio is off the streets, and life is even better than it was before – except that a bitcoin is now worth over $1,000. "The $600 we spent would now be worth $6,000," says Angle. "I wish we had gone hungry."

His buddy Kantola feels much the same way. "We're definitely kicking ourselves. We spent $5,000 or $6,000 on food!" he says. "Back in 2009, you could have bought four bitcoins for a dollar. If I could go back [and buy some then], I wouldn't be here right now. I'd probably be in a mansion."

This is the conundrum that now hangs over the burgeoning Bitcoin economy. The digital currency is beginning to streamline the way we pay for things, transfer money, and make donations, but because its value is rising so steadily, spending it can seem like a bad idea.

Back in September, on days when local charities weren't serving free food, Angle would pull out his smartphone and open up Gyft, an Android app that let him convert his bitcoin reserves into gift cards for places like Papa John’s pizza. Nowadays, he and his buddies ration groceries they get from local food banks and other charities, while their bitcoins remain in their digital wallets – unspent. They've become Bitcoin speculators.

For some, this is Bitcoin's greatest flaw. Because its value keeps trending up, the argument goes, people are just gonna hoard the stuff, and it will never fulfill its promise as something that can remake the world of money. How things will ultimately play out is still open to debate – economists say the argument doesn't hold water – but it has certainly affected these three guys in Pensacola.

The Ups and Downs —————–

In recent months, Angle has helped others set up bitcoin wallets, and he believes the value of the currency will continue its steep upward trajectory. The trouble is that the bitcoins aren't streaming into his wallet as quickly as they were before. Right now, he and his friends are sitting on the equivalent of about $25.

They're still using Bitcoin Tapper, a mobile app that doles out a tiny fraction of a bitcoin if you spent hours tapping on a digital icon over and over again. But they say the rewards have decreased on the site where they watched videos for bitcoins. They're trying to make up for this with Free Bitcoin, a service where you type in a simple captcha for a chance to win a sliver of a bitcoin. But the big problem is that donations have dried up. "We haven't gotten any donations since the rise in the value of bitcoin," Angle says. Other people, it seems, are holding onto their bitcoins in much the same way he is.

>Other people, it seems, are holding onto their bitcoins in much the same way he is

Angle and his friends aren't the only ones seeing a drop in donations. Bitcoin100 – an organization started with the sole purpose of encouraging charities to accept bitcoins – received as many as 16 bitcoins a day in January and February, when the value of the digital currency was hovering between $10 and $20, according to the public bitcoin ledger. But after that, daily donations dropped to six bitcoins, and in October – when Bitcoin's steep rise in value started – the donations pretty much flatlined.

But Bitcoin100's Dmitry Murashchik believes that doesn't necessarily mean people are hoarding their bitcoins. As the value of digital currency appreciated, he says, his organization had more money than it could quickly hand out to charities. People could see that in its public ledger, he argues, so they stopped donating.

Meanwhile, two homeless-friendly charities – such as Sean's Outpost, which introduced Jesse Angle and his friends to digital currency, and Bitcoins Not Bombs, a bitcoin-only outfit that hands out free hoodies to San Francisco's homeless – reported fantastic numbers for their Bitcoin Black Friday campaigns. Sean's Outpost raised more than 40 bitcoins, the equivalent of roughly $44,000, and Bitcoins Not Bombs organizer Davi Barker says that Black Friday was the most successful day in the history of its Hoodie the Homeless campaign.

"We’re not getting as much in bitcoin, but we are in its comparable U.S. dollar value," says Sean's Outpost founder Jason King. "We're getting a lot more donors donating smaller quantities, and the total aggregate amount being raised has been going up."

The thing to remember is that spending some bitcoins doesn't keep you from saving others. And you can always buy more at comparable prices – if you don't wait too long. The fact of the matter is that if you're spending relative to the value of the dollar –and, unlike Jesse Angle, you have a regular income – spending bitcoins isn't that big of a deal. Despite the steady rise in value, the number of Bitcoin transactions continue to rise as well.

What's more, the rise in value has increased awareness of the currency, and that, Bitcoin100's Murashchik says, has helped garner interest among charities. "We are having one or two charities contacting us almost every day, wanting to know how they can participate." If more charities start adopting Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies like Litecoin and Peercoin, the ultimate beneficiaries are the poor and the homeless.

Anonymous Money —————

Like Sean's Outpost, Bitcoins Not Bombs is also working to teach the homeless how to use Bitcoin themselves. It has started handing out Bitcoin brochures alongside free hoodies.

"We're hoping to see if there is a use or demand for Bitcoin as a tool for the poor people in San Francisco," says Barker, pointing out that many of the homeless and poor have smartphones that would let them tap the digital currency. "If we can get them into a currency that appreciates over time, it might be a valuable tool in the future."

If you’re homeless, the great thing about bitcoin is that you can set up a wallet without an ID or a street address. And once you start filling this wallet, there are plenty of ways of converting bitcoins into cash and food and other goods, all without identification.

Getting an ID can be a real hassle, as Angle and Kantola know firsthand. There are fees involved, and the state of Florida requires a birth certificate and other documents, which they don't have.

>If you’re homeless, the great thing about bitcoin is that you can set up a wallet without an ID or a street address

Plus, as Barker points out, they can make some extra money if bitcoin value rise. Bitcoin isn't a panacea, but it's certainly a step forward for the homeless.

Angle and his friends are doing their part to speed adoption of bitcoin. Since the world learned, through a previous WIRED article, that he, Kantola, and Harrison were using the world's most popular digital currency to help themselves survive in the physical world, people have started approaching them with questions on how bitcoin works and how to set up a wallet. Some even started calling them "The Bitcoin Guys."

So far, the guys have helped a handful of people, including their friend Geoff Miller, two other homeless folks, and an older gentleman at the local library. All that "really lit a fire under them," says Jason King, who turned Angle, Kantola and Harrison onto Bitcoin earlier this year when he was distributing meals through Sean’s Outpost.

Giving Thanks ————-

All told, their lives are on the up. About a month ago, while browsing Craigslist, Harrison found a small two-bedroom house that rented for just $500 a month. He and Danny McWaters, a 61-year-old man he and friends met while living on the streets, went to check it out, and they all ended up moving in. Harrison and McWaters are paying the rent with aid they get from the government, while they, along with Angle and Kantola, look for work.

So now, when they scrounge for bitcoin online, they don’t have to camp out in the downtown park that offers wireless internet or plug in to the wall outside the local library. They can connect their laptops and their new Galaxy Rush smartphones to their own wireless internet network – which Harrison pays for – while sitting on two couches donated by Sean's Outpost.

>Now, when they scrounge for bitcoin online, they don’t have to camp out in the downtown park that offers wireless internet or plug in to the wall outside the local library

"There’s this huge problem with recidivism among the homeless in that they’re often back on the street within six months," says King, who still delivers meals to The Bitcoin Guys in their new home. "We're trying to give them as much support to keep them off the street."

Harrison and McWaters sleep in the house's two bedrooms, while Angle and Kantola are set up in the two small living rooms. Although they're currently sleeping on the floor and on couches, the house is much warmer than the carport where they used to sleep, and they hope to have beds soon. "It's a lot better," says Harrison, who has been homeless on and off for 25 years. "It feels good to actually have a place."

For Angle, the adjustment was "a little overwhelming." For the first two weeks, he says, he couldn’t sleep. But he's getting used to it. Last month, he cooked his own Thanksgiving dinner for the first time in five years. A local church gave them a 13.5-pound turkey, instant mashed potatoes and stuffing, an apple pie, bread rolls, green beans, cream of mushroom soup, and bacon, which Angle used to wrap the turkey and flavor the stuffing and green-bean casserole. The four roommates and their friend Geoff Miller – who also uses Bitcoin – shared a feast at a small fold-out table.

"It was nice being able to gorge on food that day," says Kantola, who helped Angle make the bacon and green bean casserole. "You can't go wrong with bacon."

There were many reasons to give thanks. Yes, they regret spending those bitcoins. Digital currency isn't like bacon. You can go wrong. But you shouldn't think of Angle, Kantola, and Harrison as bitcoin failures. On the contrary. Though they went wrong in some respects, the digital currency has treated them well in others. Very well indeed.