By Edward W. Mandel

It’s been said that cryptocurrency isn’t a good medium for going out and buying a cup of coffee. That’s because it has, over the course of 2017 and 2018, shown that it can whipsaw in value as measured by any reserve currency — that is, the currency in which baristas prefer to be paid.

That said, it’s not much of a logistical challenge to set up an ecommerce site that posts prices in dollars or yen or euros, then translate BTC equivalence in real time. There really isn’t a technological reason not to do it. It’s entirely a marketing issue.

Some e-tailers doubt that there’s enough demand for crypto-denominated purchases to justify taking their IT team off whatever other projects they already have to build this widget. Others believe — or believe their consumers believe — that the crypto market is inherently sketchy and any online store that takes payment in digital assets will catch its reputational cooties.

At IOU.io, we don’t subscribe to that superstition. We intend to take payment in leading cryptocurrencies just as we welcome fiat currency. To us, there’s no real distinction. If you have it in hand or if the market is confident in your ability to settle in it at a time certain, then you ought to be able to spend it at IOU. (That’s not a promise, just my opinion. Read on.)

And we’re not exactly breaking new ground. There are scores if not hundreds of leading ecommerce sites where BTC is welcome, and perhaps other widely traded coins.

Your search for merch

There are a number of outlets that have already posted litanies of crypto-friendly ecommerce sites. I won’t repeat them at length here, but I’ll attempt to highlight those of greatest interest. For the record, though, here’s an unordered list of lists so you can make a deeper dive:

· Use The Bitcoin

· Coinsutra

· Lifewire

· Coinswitch

· Unblock

But maybe I can help you get started.

Overstockis the obvious one, I suppose. CEO Patrick Byrne was very much in the vanguard of crypto adoption, as I mentioned in a previous post. Similarly Shopify, which I also noted in that post, is still ready, willing and able to exchange goods for bitcoin.

But let’s go beyond the obvious now. Other familiar shopping sites that take crypto include leading British ecommerce site Asosand peer-to-peer tchotchkes purveyor Etsy. And even Amazon, the behemoth which has seen very little love here on my blog, is kicking around the idea of accepting crypto. They’re not there yet but, as much as it pains me to say it, the day Jeff Bezos gives bitcoin the green light is the day its dollar-denominated value punches through its resistance point.

There’s at least one blockchain-native shopping platform, BitPlaza. Although it takes payment in crypto, it doesn’t go anywhere near as far as IOU does. For example, they don’t enable you and the merchants to determine your creditworthiness; they continue to rely on the legacy system of rating agencies and charge cards.

The travel industry seems to be leading the charge. That isn’t too surprising, considering how much many travel-related firms are already using distributed ledger technology to streamline their operations — yes, I wrote about this beforeas well. But Expediaand CheapAirare at the forefront of actually accepting digital assets in trade for their services, with British Airways, AirBaltic, AirTreks,Cheap Bizz Class, Destiniaand Ocean Reef Resortsfollowing the trend. There are even a few blockchain-native travel agencies, including aBitSky, BTCtrip,Far Eastern Air Transportand Bitcoin.Travel. In tangentially related news, if you decide to move to wherever your destination is, you can pay at least one mover, Roadway Moving Co., in bitcoin. If you’re looking to move to London, the local RE/MAXoffice takes crypto. If you’re planning on really getting away from it all — and by “it all” I mean air, gravity and Starbucks — you can empty your bitcoin wallet in the direction of space tourism pioneer Virgin Galactic.

A lot of e-tailers who take crypto identify themselves as selling “gifts,” which I suppose could be anything. Anyway, maybe you can get your next life event registered at eGifter, Gyftor GiftOff. For a particularly special gift, you might want to consider Reeds Jewelers. They might not be as famous as Kay Jewelers, but they’ll give you physical stones in return for digital money. (Personally, I don’t shop at that at that larger chain. If their ads are true and “every kiss begins with Kay,” then I’m going to keep buying jewelry at BJ’s.)

Fast food is also in the mix, but not all chains and not all locations. Subwayin Argentina and Burger Kingin Russia top the list.

Tech follows tech

As you might expect, there are a number of tech companies that are in the forefront of cryptocurrency adoption. Microsoftis certainly the biggest of the bunch, followed by telco giant AT&T. But they’re not the only ones you’ve heard of. Geek gear e-tailer Neweggis another example, as are tax prep software giant Intuit Labsand satellite-based internet service provider Dish.

Within the tech sector — again, as you might expect — an outsized number of companies that sell privacy gear and services take crypto. AirVPN, Cyber SSL, Invizbox and others fill this niche, plus just about any site that specializes in selling cold storage and other security products targeted directly at crypto enthusiasts.

How about our own tokens?

It’s important to note the distinction between cryptocurrency and utility tokens. Our IOUX offering is the latter. It’s essentially a loyalty program chit that you can use to facilitate transactions and engage in the more social aspects of IOU participation. You’ll be able to buy these with crypto, of course, but — and I can’t stress this strongly enough — don’t try to play Wall Street Master of the Universe with them. That’s not what they’re for. We can’t stop you from trying to sell them once you’ve bought them, especially if the free market puts a higher value on them than you paid the day you made your purchase. But we certainly don’t encourage or condone such speculation.

The real question is, will IOU.ioaccept crypto for purchases? As I said before, I’d like to see that, but it’s not up to me. It’s up to the individual merchants. My team and I can do all we can to persuade them to accept it, but ultimately it’s their decisions. Some will need a lot of handholding, some will need none and some might actually be unpersuadable.

But there’s one way you can help encourage them to take crypto: Keep telling the merchants that’s what you prefer. You have much more leverage than we do.

Oh, before I call it a day: You might be interested in this heat map of local merchantsthat encourage you to spend crypto in their shops around the world.