Welcome to Austria, a german speaking country with almost 9 million residents and a lot to offer when it comes to bitcoin and cryptocurrency products and services. Besides several useful services to buy and sell bitcoin in Austria, Bitrefill is the insider tip to switch to a bitcoin standard and completely live on crypto.
Monetary Roots 🌱
Austria is not only crypto friendly, it is also the home of the well known Austrian School of Economics, an economic framework explaining what money is and why a sound monetary standard is better for our world than the unsound fiat money we do have today. A lot of concepts that the Austrian School stands for seem to be implemented in Bitcoin, which is why a lot of passionate bitcoiners are engaging in discussions about this topic. As we see, having a market driven, sound and valuable money lies deep in the Austrian roots which is why the concept of bitcoin is immediately understood by many. Institutions like Scholarium for example are teaching all basics required to understand economics and monetary theories.
Buying And Selling 💶
There are several ways to purchase your bitcoin in Austria. The usual way is buying them on exchanges. Bitpanda — one of the largest exchanges in Europe is located in Austria. But there are competitors coming up that are specializing on bitcoin alone as the most important asset such as 21 bitcoin, a really promising startup from Salzburg!
If you want to get your coins via ATM Austria will not let you down either. Kurant is the biggest service provider for crypto ATMs in the country. With round about 170 ATMs they built an area-wide network of buying and selling coins wherever you want. Kurant is a subsidiary of Coinfinity a company specialising on Bitcoin trading, consulting and selling preloaded bitcoin wallet cards.
Those are the possibilities when it comes to purchasing your bitcoin, let’s take a look at another important thing when it comes to building a circular bitcoin economy: spending them!
Living On Bitcoin 🧘🏻♂️
Other than certain cities in Switzerland, spending your bitcoin isn’t that common in austrian stores yet. There are a few exceptions like the House of Nakamoto in Vienna where you can buy bitcoin merchandise and some other cool products, but it is not a common form of payment in Austria.
That is where Bitrefill comes into play. If shops do not accept bitcoin directly, one can use bitrefill to pay for gift cards with bitcoin (on chain and via the Lightning Network) and certain altcoins. But what are the actual products and services you can buy?
(Source: https://www.btc-echo.de/btc-echo-wien-zu-besuch-im-house-nakamoto/)
From H&M to Adidas and PRIMARK when going into the physical stores, to Zalando, Amazon, Mediamarkt and Cyberport when shopping online you can pay a good part of your living expenses with crypto when using the Bitrefill service in Austria.
Pay for your concert tickets or your phone cards pseudonymously via Bitrefill or just get a Bitrefill Balance Card to fix your amount in Euros and avoid volatility of the bitcoin price. This might make sense after a price run up, to lock in some extra money you might need later on.
But the service is not only available for physical products or communications, you can also handle your everyday gaming life on bitcoin if you want to. Purchase gift cards for Steam, PlayStation, Fortnite or Minecraft, just to name a few of the possibilities.
Especially when using the Lightning Network to pay for your Bitrefill vouchers the User Experience is great. You can pay in seconds without an account and just your email address. If you create an account though (in under a minute, only with an email address), you are able to get some satoshis back for your purchases. Getting bitcoin cashback when spending crypto is the way to go.
All in all Bitrefill is a key player in enabling everyone to live a bitcoin only lifestyle in Austria and avoiding dependency on the fiat monetary system.
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