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A couple of summers ago, I used to order lunch via Grubhub while working long days in the office. When ordering, I always made sure I was logged into Lolli, a bitcoin rewards platform with a browser extension, so that I earned sats back on my purchases.

I eventually stopped eating out so much and began cooking food at home, and over time, I mostly forgot about how I used to stack sats on everyday purchases with Lolli. However, I recently checked my wallet and found 312,770 sats that had risen in value to be worth $220 at the time of writing this.

Looking through my transaction history, the majority of my Lolli purchases were via Grubhub.

My bitcoin rewards for just ordering lunch

My bitcoin back rewards from my ~$20 lunch purchases are currently worth $3-4 each. As bitcoin continues to increase in price, it is pretty wild to think that the rewards I earned will one day be worth more than the purchases I made to get them…

Honestly, it feels like the greatest financial hack that ever existed.

Then, I remembered I had an account with Fold, another bitcoin rewards app. I logged into my account and found 300,416 sats, currently worth $226, just chilling in my wallet there. I also saw that I had accumulated my total rewards earned 1,057,710 sats, currently worth $750, using Fold. Again, all this for doing nothing more than making everyday purchases.

Why did I ever stop using these products? I think I was just lazy and now I’m kicking myself at all the extra bitcoin I could have stacked if I had kept using these platforms — especially through the bear market…

That’s when I realized the genius of these platforms: they don’t require customers to go out of their way to acquire bitcoin. They just allow them to live their lives and get rewards. They make it so that no real change in behavior is required, and people don’t have to invest their hard-earned dollars to get their hands on some bitcoin.

Most Bitcoin companies cater to a pretty niche market that is more technical. But using these products makes me think there is another way to get people into Bitcoin. Bitcoin rewards apps are a clever gateway that my friends who are not into Bitcoin would probably think is really cool and would probably be interested in using to stack their first sats.

While I wish I could go back in time to the bear market and redo all my everyday purchases utilizing a BTC rewards platform, I can’t.

However, I can control my actions today and while moving forward — so I’ll be downloading these apps again. You should, too.

This article is a Take*. Opinions expressed are entirely the author's and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.*