&gt; Isn&#x27;t using Bitpay just a way of exchanging bitcoin for dollars, while kidding yourself that&#x27;s not what you&#x27;re doing?<p>That&#x27;s fungibility. That&#x27;s liquidity. A big marker of stability and legitimacy for a normal currency is that it&#x27;s freely convertible.<p>A parallel example: you can pay for stuff &quot;in euros&quot; on Paypal, but Steam likely only gets dollars. That&#x27;s still good for the viability of the euro as a currency, because it can be easily exchanged for goods and services, even with a middleman.