10 Awesome Uses of Cryptocurrency in 2024

To most people, cryptocurrencies are typically thought of as high-risk investments. However, what is getting lost amid the hype and speculation is that most decentralized digital currencies, such as Bitcoin, were created to ‘do something’ and so have a wide range of powerful use cases. Here are some answers to the question of ‘what can you do with cryptocurrency?’

1. Low-cost money transfers

One of the most well-known uses of cryptocurrency is for sending and receiving payments at low cost and high speed. For example, a recent $99 million Litecoin (LTC) transaction took only two and a half minutes to process and cost the sender only $0.40 in transaction fees. If this money transfer had gone through a financial intermediary the fees would have been much higher and the transfer would have taken several days, or longer if this was a cross-border transaction.

The low fees associated with transactions using digital currencies such as Litecoin (LTC), Stellar (XLM) or Bitcoin Cash (BCH) make them excellent payment systems for international money transfers.

2. Earn interest on Bitcoin and other cryptcurrencies with ‘Yield Farming’

Successfully trading crypto for profits requires a lot of time, experience and skill and instead many cryptocurrency owners are holding their coins for long term gain. There are ways to earn steady ‘interest’ on crypto, though. Popular examples include DeFi lending and crypto staking. This article covers how to use crypto for yield farming, and this survey shows which platforms are offering the highest interest and on what coins.

With the interest rates offered by traditional bank accounts at all time lows, lending your crypto to a reputable platform is certainly an option – with 12% per annum being offered on some highly liquid cryptocurrencies like Tether.

It is important to note, however, that this type of lending is not risk free. Several major crypto lending platforms went bust in 2022, taking their customer’s funds down with them. Crypto lending or borrowing is not insured by the FDIC or similar government bodies in other countries.

Don’t have any crypto to stake? Check this article for how to mine crypto on your home PC.

3. A censorship-resistant alternative store of wealth

While you probably don’t think your bank account and assets could be frozen, the reality is that this occurs more often than people realise — especially in jurisdictions with dubious rule of law. All it can take is for someone to be accused of financial misconduct or making powerful enemies. When that happens, people can find themselves with no access to cash, even if they’ve done nothing wrong.

This is where one of the most unique and powerful cryptocurrency uses comes into play. Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin act as a censorship-resistant alternative store of wealth that only the individual with the private keys to the wallet has access to. Hence, no personal Bitcoin wallet can ever be frozen by authorities.

4. Invest in innovative early-stage startups

The emergence of digital token-based fundraising has allowed anyone with an Internet connection to become an investor in innovative early-stage tech startups, while at the same time providing new startup ventures with much-needed seed capital.

Although a rarer event these days, Initial coin offerings (ICOs) and IPOs are a form of fundraising that provides startups with the opportunity to raise capital by selling a newly-created digital token to early backers of the project in exchange for established cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC) or Ether (ETH). The price of the newly-issued token then acts as proxy linked to the success or failure of said startup once it starts to trade in the secondary market.

In the past, access to these deals would have only been available to experienced venture capitalists, but the advent of cryptocurrency has opened these opportunities up to a much broader spectrum of investors.

In some cases the digital tokens of the most successful ICOs have increased in value by several thousand percent and cryptocurrency-based fundraising has helped startups to raise over $12 billion in the past two years.

5. Make private transactions

Privacy-centric digital currrencies such as Monero (XMR), Zcash (ZEC), and PIVX (PIVX) enable users to make anonymous financial transactions.

That means individuals can make money transfers without having to explain to a bank why they are sending a large sum of money, what the sources of the funds are and who they are sending it to, which can delay the transaction and involve unnecessary bureaucratic processes.

6. Send non-cash remittances

Another powerful use case for cryptocurrencies is non-cash remittances. Blockchain startup SureRemit, for example, enables its users to send non-cash remittances from anywhere in the world to selected African nations.

Diaspora Africans can purchase SureRemit’s native RMT tokens, which are then used within the SureRemit app to make non-cash remittances such as mobile data top-ups or utility bill payments for their relatives in Africa.

7. Get paid to post content

The world’s first incentivized social media and blogging platform, Steemit, enables publishers to receive financial rewards in the form of cryptocurrency for posting content and for curating on the network by upvoting high-quality content.

Steemit financially empowers its users by rewarding them for contributing to the platform as opposed to taking its users data and selling it to third-parties like Facebook does. For this reason, Steemit has become particularly popular in emerging markets where it boasts a high number of users. More recently the Taki social media app also pays content contributors with crypto.

8. Rent out your spare hard drive space to the cloud

Decentralized blockchain-based cloud storage solutions such as Storj enable users to earn cryptocurrency in exchange for renting out their hard drive storage space to those who need it on a peer-to-peer basis.

“Storj can be faster, cheaper, and more secure than traditional cloud storage platforms. Faster because multiple machines are serving you your file simultaneously, cheaper because you are renting people’s spare hard-drive space instead of paying for a purpose-built data center, and more secure because your file is both encrypted and shredded. There is no need to trust a corporation, vulnerable servers, or employees with your files. Storj completely removes trust from the equation,” the company states on its website.

Storj and other decentralized cloud storage solutions, such as Siacoin and Filecoin, not only provide a cheaper and more secure alternative to existing corporate cloud storage platforms but also provide users with a new revenue stream.

9. Travel the world & beyond

Due to the explosive growth of the cryptocurrency ecosystem in the past 10 years, it is now possible to travel the world by spending cryptocurrency.

Established travel agents such as CheapAir and Destinia accept Bitcoin as a payment method to book flights, car rentals, and hotels.

The growth of the bitcoin ATM market also means travelers are now able to convert their cryptocurrency into local currency in most major cities around the world.

If space is more your scene, Richard Branson’s commercial space travel company, Virgin Galactic, announced way back in November 2013 that is accepting Bitcoin payments for space travel bookings.

While the California-based company has not yet managed to successfully launch a commercial space flight, several future astronauts have already paid for their tickets — worth $250,000 — in Bitcoin, including Bitcoin advocates Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss.

10. Buy a lambo (or a Tesla)

Last but not least, you can also use your cryptocurrency to buy a Lamborghini. The Bitcoin luxury marketplace De Louvois enables the “crypto rich” to purchase sports cars including the cryptocurrency community’s favorite status symbol, the Lamborghini, using bitcoin. The marketplace also offers a range of other luxury goods such as art, fine wines, and real estate for those whose digital pockets are deep enough. Also, Tesla accepts Dogecoin for its cars.