GOLDEN VALLEY, Minn. — Amazon Prime Day is next week, and the online retailer is recognizing that some shoppers have put their cash into cryptocurrency. While Amazon doesn't directly accept it as payment for goods yet, there are still ways to buy stuff with it.
So says Michael Muchmore with PCMag. He tested all the stuff and the things, figured out what works, and wrote an article about it. So, we tapped into his crypto-understanding brain to get the goods.
“You buy gift cards. You buy Amazon gift cards and there are a bunch of sites which will let you convert your cryptocurrency into gift cards, and they'll make it easy,” says Michael Muchmore.
You can also buy Visa and Mastercard gift cards too. And those can be used anywhere. Michael also suggests a site called Purse.
"You can search for a product within the Amazon catalog within the Purse website,” he says.
“What you do is you scan your QR code that's connected to your bitcoin wallet, or your cryptocurrency wallet, and the Purse site converts it, and I believe they give you discounts as well,” Muchmore says.
Bitpay lets you buy and store your cryptocurrency and then purchase Amazon gift cards directly on the platform. They also have a card you can fund, as does Cash App.
“That's actually a cryptocurrency wallet that lets you create a card, a debit card, that you can use anywhere you use a credit card basically,” Muchmore says.
And PayPal lets you buy cryptocurrency and convert it back into cash money.
“It's a way to invest in cryptocurrency and then use your profits to buy things,” he says.
Michael says when it comes to paying with cryptocurrencies, there's a catch.
“This is one thing you should look out for when you're converting, especially from bitcoin. The fees are high. If you have other cryptocurrencies like Cardano or Ethereum the fees are not quite as bad,” he says.
So, there you go. Spend your Ethereum like it's going out of style…which it apparently isn't.
By the way, Amazon Prime Day is June 21-22.