Purchasing Electronics with BitCoin

The “withdrawal” option on Kraken worked well when I used it to purchase a “refurbished” Brother laser printer on NewEgg. All you need to do is

  1. Navigate to the withdrawals page on your Kraken account
  2. Click the add withdrawal account button
  3. On the NewEgg invoice page, copy the account number (bitcoin address) beneath “BitPay” and along side the QR code.
  4. Paste the account number into the “add account” field on Kraken
  5. Click the withraw button on Kraken
  6. Paste the amount from the BitPay invoice on NewEgg
  7. add the 0.0005 BTC processing fee to the withdrawl amount

I’m not sure if Kraken or the BTC network or BitPay imposes this half a millicoin transaction fee. Maybe it’s standard, but optional, on the BTC network these days. This is my first transaction in a long while. But if you don’t include it in your payment, BitPay won’t accept your payment. I had to send a second withdrawal for 0.001 (1 millicoin) to cover my 0.0005 BTC shortfall and the 0.0005 BTC transaction fee on that second withdrawal. But all was well in about 10 minutes. Both transactions cleared much faster than the “advertised” 60 minutes on Kraken.

And these “refurbished” printers are just overstock, from what I can tell. They come double-boxed and packaged with unbroken seals, like a new unit. They don’t have cloud printing (through Google or remote Apple/iTunes-Print). But they work great as a wireless printer (if you have a Windows computer to do the network configuration with). So if you want an economical way to print find a Laser printer refurbishment sale and jump on it. You won’t regret it. Faster, cheaper, better, more reliable… laser is WAY cheaper than inkjet, per page, no matter how cheap the printer is to start out. The InkJet cartridge and printer market is a racket.

Written on May 12, 2015