How can I change BTC into normal cash?

Question

Can you eventually hold the bitcoins in your hand, like real cash dollars or euros or something? If so, how?

I've went about all the service previews and introduction videos (actually, a video), and didn't see anything about this particular point.

I don't have a credit card, and I'm in a country where banking services aren't so profound and people don't use credit cards (Libya). Does a Bitcoin account rely on having a credit card, and will the coins you gather be added to your bank account?

Answer 1

If you mean physical bitcoins you can carry, there is: https://www.casascius.com/

I didn't quite understand the other parts of your question. Bitcoin don't rely on having a credit card nor having a bank account. https://www.bitinstant.com/ allow you to fund your exchange account with just cash.

Answer 2

You don't need a credit card to use Bitcoin, and you don't need any account anywhere. Just download the open source software from http://www.bitcoin.org

Bitcoin was born out of discontentment with traditional (central) banking, monetary, credit and transaction systems. That's why there is no central institution or authority behind Bitcoin that can administer you. How much one bitcoin is worth is entirely decided by free market dynamics within the community. That's possible because the supply of bitcoins is held artificially scarce.

It's a currency from the people for the people. If you and your community want to build an economy upon it, you all can get some GPUs or FPGAs and start mining. It will be entirely up to initiatives in your community to build services that exchange to and from traditional (Libyan) currencies, to offer goods and services, or to manufacture physical coins similar to Casascius to put into circulation (although these are rather seen as a gimmick, it may be much more convenient to use mobile phone clients nowadays for meatspace trading). Even in US and Europe where it's most popular, Bitcoin is still in its infancy and this process is only just happening.

If you happen to find Bitcoin inadequate to build a local economy upon, because you can't mine enough or you'd have to invest too much to buy some, you may take a look at different concepts like Ripple et al. These concepts build upon trust relationships however, you'll lose some of the features like the global scope and the (relative) anonymity/pseudonymity that Bitcoin offers. Money is a tool to transfer value after all. There are currently no known tools or technologies that can solve all problems at once if you don't want a currency that is enforced by an authority.

Answer 3

Bitcoin doesn't need a bank account - your bitcoin wallet is your bank account, and you don't need any permission or paperwork to start using bitcoin.

For example, using localbitcoins.com to change cash to bitcoins and vice versa, you don't need any kind of bank account at all.

Answer 4

Bitcoins have no central authority. There is no bank required. All Bitcoins are digital. You need only your PC to use Bitcoins. There's no need to have physical coins or bills. That said there are some initiatives to offer physical coins for example https://www.casascius.com/.

Take a look at http://www.weusecoins.com/ and http://lovebitcoins.org/.

Answer 5

What you are looking for is likely a person-to-person exchange where you provide bitcoins and in exchange you get EURO currency.

While there is some of this happening in various places, it is not found everywhere. There are no buyers or sellers listing Libya, ...yet:

• https://localbitcoins.com/country/ly Offering to exchange bitcoins to cash and vice-versa can be an income-generating activity, though in many areas doing so requires licensing.

But where there's a will there's a way.

In the meantime, here's a list of various methods:

• http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Selling_bitcoins

Answer 6

Yes, you can hold a "physical bitcoin" in your hand. You can trade it from person to person, and eventually turn it back into a digital coin if you wish.

However, most often you will be only dealing in digital bitcoins. You don't need a bank account or a credit card to use those. They are stored in a so called "block chain" - a ledger of all transactions on bitcoins. In order to spend them, you need your Bitcoin address and its private key - a really big random number. You can store it as a QR code, a file on a computer or anything, but you do need some special program to use those.

Answer 7

Bitcoins are a purely electronic currency. If you want to sell them in exchange for dollars or euros, you can do that. But as Bitcoins, they exist purely electronically. There are physical Bitcoins but basically, they're just the key to an electronic account printed in some form.

I think you're missing the concept that Bitcoins act like a currency or commodity. You can have 10 Bitcoins just like you can have 10 ounces of gold. The key difference is that the Bitcoins exist electronically rather than phyiscally. If you have Bitcoins and wants dollars, you have to find someone who has dollars and wants Bitcoins, then you exchange with them.

Bitcoins are not a payment or fund transfer system for national currencies like PayPal and Western Union are. Bitrcoins are a currency that has an efficient built-in transfer system.

Answer 8

This link might be useful to you

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2012/05/07/bitcoin-funded-debit-cards/

Answer 9

Why do people not understand what he's asking? lol. He wants to know if it's practical for a normal human being to bother with bitcoins in a regular sort of a way because they're pretty much useless unless they can be readily converted into another currency and used in real life. That's why he asks about a credit card because he assumes the most convenient way people deal in bitcoins is probably to go online and buy them with a CC and then do what you want with them and then convert them back into cash and onto your credit card. That's how people assume it works because that's how most monetary transactions work online but I haven't found any evidence that you can actually even do that. Some of these sites are talking about sending cash in the mail to get bitcoins. If you start an online business making bitcoins on the side then how do you go from having 20 bitcoins in an online account to having $200 in cash at the strip club on Friday night? And is the process too much of a pain to even bother with? Bottom line, what's the easiest and quickest way to take cash in my pocket and turn it into bitcoins online and then do the opposite and end up with local currency in my pocket again.
I've been trying to find the answer to that question too and so far I haven't found any great answers. I think the problem is that people assume that bitcoins are just another financial toy like those of the current banking system. This is an actual currency. It's not like asking how you can convert your cash into PPV minutes on some porn site. It's like asking how I can take my $20 and turn it into Indian Rupee's! Only it's even more obscure since every other currency is controlled by the world financial system and bitcoins is independant.