Well, for one thing you can do what you do with traditional currencies, such as Dollars ($), Yen (¥), or Thai Baath (฿, yes the Bitcoin symbol is the same as Baath). You can buy products from various stores, you can trade them, obtain them by trading services, but also give Bitcoins as a gift. Although Bitcoins are usually an online currency, i.e. with no physical manifestation such as coins or paper, minting services have evolved1, that provide means to mint your digital Bitcoins in physical form (see Illustration 1). What we will discuss below are Bitcoin wallets (which are similar to regular wallets), Bitcoin trading markets (i.e. MT-Gox), and Bitcoin shops where you can get products for Bitcoins.
