[drzaiusapelord]

>cards you can buy in various grocery/department stores

These are a stop gap measure. Say I have $500 and I put $400 into Xbox points and $100 into Steam points. Then some new game comes out on PC but I'm out of cash because its all tied into Xbox points. This transfer is one-way, so my money is now stuck.

With bitcoin, or some other non-vendor middle-man, I have value sitting in my wallet ready for any transaction that accepts this currency. For someone without easy access to credit, buying a couple bitcoins (or some other cryptocurrency) seems like the better move.

[etchalon]

…accept this move by Microsoft makes you add value to your account, that you cannot withdraw. So, at least in this instance, Bitcoin has not solved any problems.

Once you can purchase content directly using XBT, instead of merely using it as a funding source, you might have a use case.

Otherwise, most people would just buy a prepaid Debit card. It solves actually the same problem you're saying XBT solves, but it's accepted at vastly mere merchants.

[drzaiusapelord]

Except those cards aren't global. In countries with untrusted banking systems they aren't even for sale or they are via their own regional bank that a Western processor will just refuse to accept.

There's still a big problem out there with foreign transactions and the credit card system. Paypal kinda handles this in some scenarios, but it still is unsolved, especially when you're discussing non-trivial amounts of money.