It’s 2013 and Bitcoin has been making many inroads into ecommerce, much of the focus of adoption has been on seeing how it could allow people to use money in ways they hadn’t before. It’s almost the science fiction credits that could be traded from phone-to-phone on the street. However, before we get there, first it needs to be seen as a currency that can be used to exchange actual value and as a virtual currency it’s becoming perfect for virtual services.

This is especially palpable in the case of virtual services that have become problematic due to the nature of industries that want them shut down.

Google has recently spoken about combatting things like piracy and copyright infringement by starving out financial services and following the money. Wikileaks and cyberlockers have been targeted by credit card companies such as Visa and MasterCard for blacklisting and even PayPal has appeared to cut off their services to cloud-based locker services that allow for sharing and potential piracy at the behest of copyright cartels.

As a result, numerous venues can look to something like Bitcoin to fill the void where payment processors such as those listed above either cannot or will not involve themselves.

“Bitcoin can definitely fill a void where existing payment processors are failing, or bailing,” says Tony Gallippi, CEO of Bitcoin payment processor Bitpay. “WordPress is also a good example, where they cite over 60 countries are blocked completely from PayPal, regardless of what items are being sold.  Bitcoin is open source money, it is an open source accounting ledger in the cloud.  People can do anything they want with it.”

In the case of MEGA, the new highly encrypted cloud-based cyberlocker service forwarded by Kim Dotcom after the fall of Megaupload to a highly dubious legal campaign by the United States, resellers of the service are already turning to Bitcoin. PayPal already requires file sharing sites to get pre-approved for payment processing (and denial seems common) and the company has withdrawn its support in the past. In fact, recently several MEGA resellers dropped PayPal preemptively after an anti-piracy group, StopFileLockers, started a campaign to have the payment processor removed from such sites.
Amid them, Hosting.co.uk initially removed PayPal and added Bitcoin as a possible payment type–although they eventually added PayPal back once again.

According to Hosting.co.uk CEO Frederick Schiwek that upon the removal of PayPal it was planned to just replace it with Bitcoin processing–but now it’s seen as more of a highly successful backup for the processing service.

When asked about the benefits of adding Bitcoins, Schiwek said, “…we benefit a lot. We just started and do not have for the moment a lot of history with bitcoins; but it seems that we opened a completely new sales channel as well. We get a complete new range of clients which for example do not want to use PayPal or CC.”

With both Reddit and WordPress coming on board to accept bitcoins, it’s only a matter of time for more entirely virtual services to see how clients will benefit from being able to use bitcoins to buy into their services. This, in turn, will increase the health and longevity and future stability of the currency itself.

Bitcoins open up a whole new range of clients

Not only does accepting Bitcoin permit an outfit who might be in danger of financial attrition by banks, CC processors, or even PayPal to escape from being strangled, it also allows them to offer services to a different type of clientele who might otherwise not be able to use their services. Or, even better, in the case of privacy services and VPNs it allows them to interact mostly anonymously with clients who would otherwise like their dealings–as well as their communication–private from potential prying eyes.

While Bitcoin isn’t entirely anonymous, best described as psudeo-anonymous, it does offer a level of privacy protection that far exceeds using PayPal or a CC payment processor in the exchange of virtualized currency for a virtual service. In fact, bitcoins are pefect for this type of transaction.

To show how well this is working out, Torrentfreak recently ran an article on the top VPN services that take anonymity seriously. Amid them, several take bitcoins as a form of payment for services: BTguard, Private Internet Access, Torguard, IVPN, AirVPN, PRQ, Mullvad, BlackVPN, and Ipredator. That’s of 9 services out of 13.

With that many VPN services offering services for bitcoins, it bodes well for its adoption in these industries and provides a bellwether for future services to accept the cryptocurrency as well.