On the one hand, you have bitcoin-the-token, a snippet of code that represents ownership of a digital concept — sort of like a virtual IOU. So this is something to consider when deciding how to spend your cryptocurrency. Once you confirm the order, the process is finished and the merchant will be notified of your payment. The exception is bitcoin ATMs — some do allow you to exchange bitcoin for cash, but not all. They also indicate how much processing power they are contributing to the pool — the better the hardware, the more shares are generated. Transactions can, with some effort, be tracked this way.