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Tons of places.Expedia, NewEgg, Overstock.

See: http://spendbitcoins.com/place...

But will it be cheaper or more expensive than using a credit card?

Accepting Bitcoins is surprisingly expensive. There's a volatility risk, and for a currency that can change by 10% in minutes, that's a real problem. Coinbase (which is a dealer, rather than an exchange) has a posted buying price, good for one minute, and some shopping cart systems use that. But that price is usually lower than the prices on the major exchanges; there's a conversion cost. So, as with retail money-changers, you pay a conversion fee. Also, like most money-changers, Coinbase will briefly stop buying during periods of high volatility or if they have trouble unloading their Bitcoins.

Then, of course, there's prying the money out of the Bitcoin broker or exchange. Overstock is probably in a strong enough position to demand a daily sweep into a real bank account, with serious penalties for failure to deliver.

If you look at the few Bitcoin-accepting businesses that sell real products with typical mail order retail markups, the Bitcoin price is usually significantly higher than the US$ price. Most of the stores that currently accept Bitcoin are selling T-shirts, posters, remaindered goods, and similar crap. Of course, that's what Overstock does, so it may be a good fit.

/CSB: October of last year, 2012, I bought ~55 BtC at $12 each ($650). Just cashed out 20 ($20,240) for Xmas vacation and gifts and have a remaining 25 (~$27,500), that if they dropped back to $12 or completely disappeared overnight, I'd still be waaaaay ahead of what I earned at my 8-5 or would have gotten from any other investment. *Past results are no indication of future performance.

While you were beating your anti-BtC drum, how's that 401k doing for you? How's your market stability? Returns over time? How much "full faith" do you have in the companies in your portfolio? Any oil stocks in there? Who's gonna have the next major spill and fine from the EPA?

BtC is still REALLY early in it's run. We're still talking about buying and selling actual WHOLE BitCoin! My god! The whole design of BitCoin is that by the time the mining runs out ~2020, most transactions will be in Satoshi... that's 0.00000001 BitCoin. When 1 Satoshi = $1, the BtC economy will be (I've heard, but not calculated) multiple times larger than the sum of all other currencies in circulation. It'll also mean that 1 BtC =~$100,000,000. As far as the reality of those prospects, do some research on deflationary currencies. As long as there is a market, the value can't help but go up.

As far as a market being available, since almost anything can currently be purchased directly with BitCoin, including Gold and Silver, Porn, and just about any major retailer's gift cards, including Target for groceries, I think it has a reasonable chance at a long run. The biggest question has always been if the big financial institutions (FI) would see BtC as a threat or opportunity. If it's a threat, then they will have their government minions crack down on it and it'll go away. If it's an opportunity, (and the testimony before congress last month seems to indicate this is the way the FI want it played by the Fed Reserve), then they will keep it alive as a market to milk to and manipulate for a long time to come.

Comment: For the price of Bitcoin to really mean anything, you have to be able to exchange it for local currency

Ignorance: Blissfully believing that the price of stock or the dollar really mean anything; It's the exchange rate for GOODS AND SERVICES you fool. These can be transacted with bitcoin or dollars. Except with bitcoin I can exchange them for stuff not in the company store.

Sorry, but no. "You fool". The value of real-world currency is just as make-believe as bitcoin, true, but I can walk down to the store and buy groceries with the dollar. I can go to the store and buy a video card with the dollar. I can fill my gas tank up with the dollar. I can pay my lawn service with the dollar. I can pay my contractor to redo my kitchen with the dollar. I can buy a bus ticket with the dollar. I can pay my pharmacist with the dollar.

With bitcoin, I can pay for a few services online (here's a huge list of some places you can use bitcoins -- sexual hypnosis tapes, anarchy keyrings and other crap) or get some random crap delivered to me that looks like it came from the back of a 1970s comic book ad. I can only have flexibility, anonymity, and usefulness from it once I have exchanged it for a "real" currency. Like the dollar. And, to do that, I have to give a ridiculously large chunk to the exchanger.

In short, the difference between real world currency and bitcoin is that I can buy anything I want that money will buy. With a few exceptions, your selection looks like the ticket redemption section of a fucking Chuck E. Cheese's.

Bitcoin is backed by the stakeholders - those who have invested money into mining and bitcoins. These people are citizens of a variety of countries, many of which offer legal rights for investments. The United States, being the very capitalist nation that it is, has many laws that protect its citizen's property. These citizens will be petitioning the government constantly through every legal avenue possible to insure their bitcoin holdings are not made illegal on a political whim. In Canada for example, the Canada Revenue Agency (Canadian IRS) are going to be passing out rules for reporting the income. It's capital gains once sold on the market, and in Canada that tax rate is quite high, however it is a legal avenue to cash out bitcoins.

There is an emerging marketplace for bitcoins, Baidu probably being the largest name to enter this market at the moment. This list may seem trivial now, but there is enough momentum now that it will likely take off. All it needs is the blessing of a major US political party - and to do that just keep sending them BTC donations. They aren't going to make their own hoard of money illegal.

I can take a brand new USA $100 bill and spend it on goods and services anywhere on the goddamn planet.

Good luck with that anywhere outside of the U.S., close to the border in Canada, slightly further out into Mexico, and places like South Korea and the Philippines where the U.S. has long held a military or political presence that makes it attractive for vendors there to accept U.S. Dollars.

Go to a Belgian grocery store, see how far you get with it. In the odd chance that they'll accept it, expect it to end up taking you only as far as $90, because they would promptly proceed to... convert it to Euros. And have to incur the exchange fee. And charge you a little extra still because now the manager has to make a trip to the exchange bureau.

As for places that accept Bitcoin.. not authoritative (some sites I saw no mention of Bitcoin, but then most of them only offer it on checkout - after filling in all your details, just like most retailers):
https://www.spendbitcoins.com/places/

And, of course, you can buy pretty much any Amazon.com item through a number of services, including those who sell gift cards (which includes an even longer list of retailers, restaurants, etc.)

The fact that they most likely convert it into U.S. Dollars is not an argument against Bitcoin any more than the fact that most of the funds a customer sends to Amazon for electronics items gets very quickly converted into Chinese Yuan is an argument against U.S. Dollars.

I was curious what was all the huss around the bit coin mining about. Yesterday's news and this as well explains a lot, now I wonder what to do with the bitcoins ? Are there any similar uses of this currency that i do not know of?

Similar uses? Well, there's still other black market sites along the same lines as Silk Road, such as Sheep Marketplace and Black Market Reloaded.
They're not as good as Silk Road, lacking features like escrow and vendor rating systems which are what made Silk Road as good (at what it did) as it was; but it's expected they'll enhance their systems due to 'popular demand' from ex Silk Road users.
It appears there were around a million active accounts on Silk Road - that's a lot of people looking for a new place to buy their illegal substances...

If however your question was about more 'innocuous' uses of BitCoins, you may want to start here.

Right now I can purchase real goods in exchange for bitcoin, not all from private, criminal nor insignificant parties. The links are not hard to find and it's far more pursuasive to let people find them for themselves than to list them, but for a starter, check https://www.spendbitcoins.com/places/. Many businesses such as Paypal (so says Chief Executive John Donahoe said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal) are starting to work on methods of using them which is what is driving the speculation.

See: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/04/30/could-paypal-be-on-horizon-for-bitcoin/

The rise in price doesn't mean that more people are using it. The list of buisinesses accepting it is, at a quick skim, a list of places I wouldn't want to do any buisines with. EFF was a big name that accepted bitcoins, and they've since stopped, that's specifically what I was thinking when I said "seem to be losing ground."

It was an offhand comment.

What exactly can I do with Bitcoins? Pay for groceries? The mortgage? Light bill? Etc, etc.

Better! You can buy drugs!

You can also use it to buy on Amazon, NewEgg, etc if you use SpendBitcoins.

Yes NitroWolf, give us the real inside scoop, because so far your posts have been content-free bullshit!

How many times do people need to point out the obvious before people like you stop spreading bullshit?

Citation needed, otherwise you're full of shit. Almost none of what you listed takes BitCoin natively; you have to convert to USD or other Government Backed currency before buying those services.

You are a lying sack of shit

Everything I listed in my original post was purchased with BTC natively. Some of the links listed above are native, some are gift cards, which, as far as I know, no corporation has (yet) been able to get their gift cards backed by the government.

The quoted post said the only way to spend BTC was to buy illegal things on Silk Road (completely false) or convert to Government Backed Currency (also completely false).

So please, stop lying and spreading misinformation. If you are really just ignorant instead of a lying sack of shit, then please stop posting until you get even a modicum of accurate information.

Indeed. There are lots more merchants these days, which is impressive because the software is still pretty rough. One I recommend is SpendBitcoins which allows you to purchase things from Amazon (the guy is an Amazon Affiliate). The process is a little odd, but the guy running it is super helpful.