Recently, a Forbes reporter tried living using nothing but bitcoin for payments for a week. She published a spreadsheet that showed her spending and the U.S. dollar equivalents for each purchase.
From Forbes:
A few readers asked if I would provide the (very convoluted) ledger from my week of living on Bitcoin. Here is the accounting, including how I spent my Bitcoin and the value of that Bitcoin in U.S. dollars at the time I spent it. You’ll see the week was not just an exercise in living on Bitcoin but an exercise in living frugally (except for the 59 Bittycoins/$56 USD spent on cupcakes).
What the spreadsheet reveals, and what hasn’t been discussed in much of the coverage of bitcoin is that using bitcoin means operating in a foreign currency no matter where you go. Unless the entire world switches to bitcoin, there will always be a foreign exchange risk with bitcoin that can’t be avoided. Someone operating in a local currency does not need to worry about how much their money is worth moment to moment, but this will be a perpetual issue for any secondary currency and may ultimately be what hampers its adoption.
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