Throughout the history of cryptocurrencies there has always been one question persistently raised by the general public: can you actually buy something with them? Nearly 10 years ago, when the idea of Bitcoin was first proposed by Satoshi Nakamoto, it was described as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. Naturally, if you can send an asset to someone you can do so as a form of payment for goods and services.

Bitcoin has always been used as a form of payment. Essentially, miners have always been getting paid in Bitcoin for maintaining the network. Vitalik Buterin, perhaps one of the world’s youngest crypto-millionaires, began making his fortune by getting paid in Bitcoins for writing articles for Bitcoin Magazine, which he co-founded.

We have outlined several prominent landmarks in the adoption of crypto:

10K Bitcoin’s pizza

Every year on May 22, crypto-community celebrates a so-called Bitcoin Pizza Day. On this day in 2010, a programmer managed to pay for the delivery of two large Papa John’s pizzas to his house with 10,000 Bitcoins. Despite the fact that he actually had to transfer them to another Bitcoin enthusiast first, who in turn ordered the delivery, this event is widely regarded as the first time a cryptocurrency was used to purchase goods.

Financing the rebels of conscience

As early as January 2011, several non-profit organizations, including WikiLeaks, started accepting Bitcoins for donations. That being said, some of them dropped the cryptocurrency support shortly after, citing the lack of a legal framework around cryptocurrencies as the reason.

Heading to E-Commerce

That same year, the first ever global Bitcoin payment service provider, BitPay, was founded. Just a year later they’ve already had over 1,100 active merchants, which included WordPress — perhaps the first ever major service accepting cryptocurrency payments. Since then, they’ve helped companies like Steam, Subway, Intel, Microsoft, and many, many others to include Bitcoin in their payment options.

Cash withdrawals

On October 29, 2014, the first ever publicly available Bitcoin ATM opened in a coffee shop in downtown Vancouver, Canada. This was a two-way machine, meaning it allowed to exchange Bitcoin for cash and vice-versa. On an opening day, a total of 81 transactions to the overall amount of more than $10,000 took place. Approximately 1/3 of customers were actually first-time users of Bitcoin and were able to create their wallets on the spot.

These days, there are approximately 5 new cryptocurrency ATMs, which now accept a broad range of altcoins along with Bitcoin, opening every day. If you’re looking for a cryptocurrency ATM near you, head to CoinATMRadar for the most up-to-date map. According to their data at the time of writing, there are over 3700 cryptocurrency ATMs worldwide.