We know, we know. Choosing the perfect present for your loved ones isn’t the easiest thing to do. Every year you scout the nicely wrapped packages at your favorite stores but this year you want to do something different. You’re looking for something new; something they have never received before. How about gifting them bitcoin?

It may sound funny, but with bitcoin’s universality, instant transferability, and wide range of exchange rates offered by traders on Paxful, you can easily buy discounted gifts with the help of bitcoin, in ways you may have never thought of before. Or, if you want, sending bitcoin itself as a gift is a great idea, too!

Pay less for gifts with the help of bitcoin!

As much as you can take advantage of the exchange rate between fiat currency and bitcoin, you can also buy gift cards that are worth more than what you’re paying for. For example, you can pay $70 worth of BTC to a vendor selling an Amazon gift card that’s worth $100 — and bam, you just saved $30 on gifts! 

Good news: gift cards can get you much further than just tangible gifts. Recently, Airbnb partnered with a couple apps to encourage the use of bitcoin when booking your accommodations. 

Although you can’t use bitcoin directly on the Airbnb website, you can download apps such as Fold or Bitrefill, use bitcoin to purchase Airbnb gift cards there, then use those gift cards to book an Airbnb. In particular, you can receive a 3% cash back in bitcoin for every stay you book with Fold.

With more than 1,650 business in 170 countries partnering with these apps, there is an endless supply of gift cards you can purchase and a limitless amount of money you can save!

Gifting bitcoin itself isn’t a bad idea either

As more and more places begin to accept bitcoin as a payment method, it’s an excellent idea to give bitcoin itself as a gift to someone. We’d like to introduce two ways how you can do this:

1. Gifting bitcoin through gift cards

Bitcoin needs to come from somewhere, and one of the easiest ways is to get them with the use of gift cards. In fact, gift cards are one of the most popular payment methods on Paxful, and the trade volume associated with gift cards shot out the roof to reach over 73 million USD in late October this year. 

Paxful allows our users to use over 100 different types of gift cards to exchange for bitcoin. The most popular gift card types are Amazon, Steam, eBay, and Google Play, respectively in trade volume.  

Exchanging gift cards for bitcoin is easy. After you pick up a gift card at your local supermarket or convenience store, head over to Paxful. Create your account if you haven’t already, and pick the type of gift card you just bought as your payment option. Once you conduct a trade with your chosen vendor, you’ll see bitcoin transferred to your account in minutes.

Make sure you’re using a completely new gift card though because providing used codes is considered to be a scam on our platform. 

2. Gifting bitcoin through cold storage or paper wallets

Online peer-to-peer exchange platforms aren’t the only way to send bitcoin as a gift. If you prefer to send your bitcoin completely offline, you can use a paper wallet instead. This method is called “cold storage” and has a cool perk of securing your digital assets from being attacked or stolen by hackers — if you have your wallet right next to you, no one can steal it, right? 

There are many paper wallet generation tools online, but bitaddress.org is an extremely intuitive one that generates both bitcoin addresses and private keys after you move your mouse around to generate randomness. Once you have your bitcoin address and private key, print it out and keep it in a safe place. A cold wallet works just like a real-life wallet; if someone steals it, your money can be gone just like that.

This is how you can gift bitcoin using a cold wallet: generate a bitcoin address and private key, send bitcoin to that particular address, and pass the paper wallet to the person who’s going to receive the bitcoin. They can then check their balance by going to blockchain.info or blockexplorer.com and entering their bitcoin address.

A complete innovative way of sending money, no?

There you have it

Gift cards can get you very far with buying bitcoin and purchasing real-life products at discounted prices. With bitcoin’s acceptability growing each and every day, it makes total sense to gift bitcoin this Christmas. Who doesn’t want money to spend on whatever they fancy? 

What are you going to get your loved ones this holiday season? Let us know in the comments below!