A Bitcoin Moment
I had a moment recently. It was late at night and I was ready to hit the hay.
“Oh wait, there’s something I need to get out of the way,” I told myself.
I had kept delaying the purchase of a new printer cord to replace the one I mangled. It was time to end that procrastination now! Even though it was 1 AM, I was sure that it would only take a few minutes to place an online order and I summoned the motivation to go for it.
Addicted to Amazon’s 1-Click ordering feature, I was bummed to discover they didn’t have the cord I needed. With no time to waste, I used Google to find a site that did carry it.
Found one.
Add to shopping cart.
Select payment method.
Ugh…
I didn’t have my credit card number memorized and I looked across the unlit room to see if my wallet lay nearby. It was somewhere in a pile on the coffee table, or maybe it was upstairs, or maybe I left it in my pants pocket. Unsure and too tired, I selected PayPal to speed things up, a service I hadn’t used in a while.
Incorrect password.
Ugh…
I entered my email address and completed a captcha.
No email…
Refresh email.
Still nothing.
Refresh email again.
Nothing.
Agitated, I started Googling for help about not receiving a PayPal password reset email and instead ended up on a message board where people griped about PayPal in general.
After perusing that forum like a zombie, I got up and walked around. My wallet wasn’t downstairs or at least I couldn’t find it.
Thirty six minutes had gone by since I first encountered the checkout screen. I stopped caring about the cord and I resolved to never print anything ever again.
Before shutting down the computer for the night, I checked my phone. The only news alert I had was about bitcoin. I laughed out loud and went back to the checkout screen. Bitcoin was a payment option. I selected it, copied and pasted the payment address and sent bitcoins stored on my computer to it.
Order placed.
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tl;dr
I needed to buy a cord online. Credit card was out of reach. PayPal password was forgotten. Bitcoin saved Gotham.
Sean Murray is the President and Chief Editor of deBanked and the founder of the Broker Fair Conference. Connect with me on LinkedIn or follow me on twitter. You can view all future AltFinanceDaily events here.
