You can already pay for a ticket to space, buy a beer, or pay your college fees with it, but companies are now looking to bitcoin to fund mergers and acquisitions.

Using bitcoin to buy companies is still a very rare occurrence at the moment: so far only a handful of firms are engaging in the process. But analysts and industry-watchers claim the rapid rise in interest in the cryptocurrency could see more companies adopt bitcoin for M&A deals.

Blockchain, a bitcoin wallet that holds accounts for users of the virtual currency, bought Zeroblock, a real-time bitcoin market data and news app, for an undisclosed sum using the cryptocurrency in December last year. This followed the sale of bitcoin gambling site SatoshiDice to an unnamed buyer for $11.5m in the virtual currency in July 2013.

"There is so much at stake at this space, there is a land grab on right now," Nic Cary, CEO of Blockchain, told CNBC in a phone interview.

(Read more: Despite recent woes, 'crypto currency' is the future, say SXSW attendees)