Quote from: aminorex on March 12, 2014, 02:00:54 AM

I use [ bitcoins ] at the newsstand by my office building in midtown Manhattan, to buy chewing gum and newspapers. I use them to make charitable donations to a school in Chad and another in Kyrgyzstan. I use them to pay rent on my apartment on the UES. Eventually I should be able to replace most of my uses of fiat with uses of BTC. I will generally shop at Overstock or TigerDirect when possible, avoiding Amazon until they take bitcoin.

That is because the US Government is still lukewarm about bitcoin. AFAIK you cannot legally sell chewing gum in China for bitcoin, and I suppose that a corporate entity cannot take rent in bitcoin. If the US decides that it doesn't like bitcoin after all, you will not be able to do that in the US either.

By the way, are those merchants actually accepting bitcoin, or do they receive dollars through processors like Bitpay?

Quote from: Richy_T on March 12, 2014, 02:01:07 AM

The dollar was banned in the USSR (and a few other states) but was still quite popular (there) by my understanding.

"Quite popular" is relative. Surely no e-commerce site in Russia will post prices in dollars or accept payment in dollars. So what things can you buy with dollars in Russia, away from hotels, airports, and other tourist-frequented places?