Get Yourself Some Bitcoin Using iTunes Gift Cards

Have you tried trading bitcoin on LocalBitcoins using the iTunes payment section recently? There used to be a huge volume of trade happening through gift cards and bitcoin at LocalBitcoins. I was surprised when I came across this first. I was wondering why would anyone want to buy and sell bitcoin in exchange for gift cards? I didn’t realise the girth of the issue at the hand when I came across it for the first time.

When I did some research on that topic, the answer became obvious – over 2 billion people in the face of our planet are unbanked, that’s 2 out of every 7 people on earth. They do not have the possibility of getting bitcoin at the market price using an exchange.

Also if you are planning to get bitcoin through an exchange, you need to through this long verification process, that takes so much time considering the current surge in demand. It might take you weeks before you get your hands on some bitcoin. However using a gift card to do the deed is fast.

So, I tried bitcoin trade using iTunes gift cards at LocalBitcoins. I used gift cards to buy bitcoin and vice versa. If you are familiar with iTunes and are regularly using it, this will be beneficial for you. However, it’s not the same anymore.

How LocalBitcoins iTunes gift card trade is done

I recently found that, due to some random reason, LocalBitcoins has stopped iTunes gift cards as a payment method and it has been removed from their website. The official announcement mentioned on their forum, reads as follows:

They haven’t informed us of a concrete reason as to why LocalBitcoins have stopped accepting iTunes gift cards as a payment option. I even saw some threats on the forum saying that if anyone dare to trade on the forum or even so much as talk about it, they will be banned from their service. I tried to talk to their support regarding this, but I haven’t received any reply so far.

As of now we can only speculate about why they stopped, we can’t know for sure yet. Maybe they ran into some problems with Apple because of it or they didn’t see it as a good payment method, or they are concerned about the risks involved.

The reality is that, for a lot of people who are not able to access their banking services, like 70% of Africa, this was one of the easiest ways to get bitcoin and start saving some. So what can they do now? Are there any alternatives available that can fix this deep void created by the ban? 

Yes! Paxful is a viable alternative

I liked the proposition that enabled me to buy bitcoin with gift cards, so I was looking for other alternatives that enabled this kind of transaction. I found another way that’s really robust and useful at the same time– Paxful. I think this is a lot better in many ways as well. By using Paxful you will be able to buy and sell bitcoin in over 300 different ways.

This means that I will be able to trade my bitcoin for almost any kind of monetary value I see fit. The service acts like an escrow to ensure safety of your transaction and the whole process was buttery smooth.

I hope this article was useful for you to learn more about how you can get bitcoin for yourself or for others fast and easy using various new methods of payment including gift cards.

If you have any doubts with regards to this, let us know through the comments and we will be glad to help you out. If you have any suggestions regarding how we can improve the article, let us know them through the comments as well for us to improve.

Do you have any other reservations against getting yourself some bitcoins? Are you invested on any of these technologies? Let us know through the comments.