Driving to work today, I was thinking about the phenomenal run up bitcoin had last night, and how ironic it is that BTC still aren’t useful for the average person.
Thinking about how this could change, I came up with the following app/service. I am wondering if anyone is working on something very similar, or if it exists.
The service would be both an exchange, and transaction app. Like some exchanges, users have BTC balances, with BTC held by the service on their account, but not at a user-controlled address.
Let’s call it Bittle.
Transactions would occur like this:
I buy a cup of coffee for $3. I decide to pay with BTC. The merchant gets a Bittle ID from me, and I approve the purchase. Bittle then sends $3 to the merchant on my behalf, and deducts the equivalent BTC from my account. Bittle sells the BTC on its exchange, and charges a small processing fee.
In short, any merchant with a Bittle account could get USD from people paying with BTC. I imagine the processing fee could be competitive with credit cards.