Ideal community to introduce Bitcoin to?

[Elwar]

I was thinking about how great it would be if Bitcoin were accepted and widely used in a local community. Local purchases would be encouraged and the price would start to be viewed in terms of its own currency as opposed to a conversion of another.

But what would be the ideal location to do this?

The best place would be a destination tourist location where most travelers are already converting their currency into the local currency. When you travel abroad you tend to have to exchange your currency anyhow so if there were a travel destination where this was already taking place then a simple conversion to Bitcoin would be no more of a hassle for the travelers.

I cannot think of any place off hand. Most of the small carribean countries accept dollars. Even going across the border to Mexico you can pay in dollars.

I have gone to video game establishments where you convert your money to tokens or cards with money stored on them, maybe Bitcoin could replace those cards.

Any ideas of a community where many people who visit are already exchanging currencies? Preferably some place small with few merchants that could be convinced to accept BTC.

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[cbeast]

You may be onto something. The community doesn't have to be a geographical one. Find a market that would find Bitcoin useful. Your tourism example may find vendors anywhere and everywhere that that would accept Bitcoin denominated in local currency. Travel websites might be a good place to advertise the value of travelers using Bitcoin.

[Stephen Gornick]

I was thinking about how great it would be if Bitcoin were accepted and widely used in a local community. Local purchases would be encouraged and the price would start to be viewed in terms of its own currency as opposed to a conversion of another.

But what would be the ideal location to do this?

Bitcoin reaching critical mass in New Hampshire?
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=66832.0


At Chaos Communications Camp (CCC) 2011 apparently there was a BTC Village




There have been threads discussing where the community might be responsive to using bitcoins:

Bitcoin in Honduras' new charter cities
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=53990.0

A "bitcoin ranch":
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2713.msg37137#msg37137

20Mission / San Francisco:
 - http://www.thebitcointrader.com/2012/05/bitcoins-hogwarts-san-francisco-tech.html

An individual attempt to start community building:
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=83803.0


Consider how Meze Grill, probably the best known retail merchant to accept bitcoin, didn't even have enough customers wishing to pay using bitcoins that they never even bothered to reinstate a method to accept bitcoins following the MyBitcoin mess.  The staff at Whiskey Dicks, the only restaurant in Florida to advertise that they accept bitcoins, doesn't know how to accept bitcoin for payment and can do so only when the owner is around.

A merchant isn't likely to look into adding bitcoins as a payment method until there are guarantees, such as those that come from the business' customers asking if they can pay using bitcoins.  In a normal cross section of the population, there generally just isn't a concentration of bitcoiners sufficient to justify the expense to accept bitcoin (in terms of hardware but also for time to train staff, etc.).

Bit-Pay claims to have signed up more than 500+ merchants for its ecommerce payments system.  Since these merchants are already receiving bitcoins then they might then also want to start using bitcoins to pay their labor force and their supply chain rather than converting to dollars (or whatever currency they use) first, like they generally do now.  It is when this extension up the supply chain starts to happen that the Bitcoin economy can enjoy a network effect.  With most supply chains being global nowadays, using bitcoin throughout the supply chain even doesn't really do much for trying to get a local community to adopt bitcoin.  But it might give an indication of where, when they start to occur organically, they might begin to appear first.

[kiba]

Consider how Meze Grill, probably the best known retail merchant to accept bitcoin, didn't even have enough customers wishing to pay using bitcoins that they bothered to reinstate a method to accept bitcoins following the MyBitcoin mess.  The staff at Whiskey Dicks, the only restaurant in Florida to advertise that they accept bitcoins, doesn't know how to accept bitcoin for payment and can do so only when the owner is around.

Don't you mean, "never bothered to reinstate a method to accept bitcoins following the MyBitcoin mess"?

A merchant isn't likely to look into adding bitcoins as a payment method until there are guarantees, such as those that come from the business' customers asking if they can pay using bitcoins.  In a normal cross section of the population, there generally just isn't a concentration of bitcoiners sufficient to justify the expense to accept bitcoin (in terms of hardware but also for time to train staff, etc.).

Which is why it's a good idea to concentrate bitcoiners if possible.

[cbeast]

I mean, couldn't you just come right out and advertise that Bitcoin travelers are not limited to the amount of cash they carry? Wouldn't it be great if resorts would take Bitcoin?

[Stephen Gornick]

Don't you mean, "never bothered to reinstate a method to accept bitcoins following the MyBitcoin mess"?

Yup, fixed now.  Thanks.

I mean, couldn't you just come right out and advertise that Bitcoin travelers are not limited to the amount of cash they carry? Wouldn't it be great if resorts would take Bitcoin?

In my response above I was thinking of describing how travel is one industry that should be looking closely at Bitcoin.  Travel is one of the categories that often requires "high risk" merchant accounts.  The first movers could use the ability to offer a lower price to bitcoin customers as a competitive advantage.

The category has unique challenges though which explain why it sees a lot of chargebacks.  Travel is a prepayment for a later service with a party that you might never have done business with before (e.g., hotel in a new city).  I can see consumers preferring credit cards over bitcoin for travel, specifically so the chargeback protection remains available as an option.  There certainly are solutions, such as using an escrow partner who performs arbitration.  But that's a big divergence from a VISA/Mastercard transaction.

On the other hand, if its discounted by 5% for paying with Bitcoin and for a repeat visit to a hotel I've either been to before or one that is a reputable, I'll take the 5% discount over the chargeback protection / insurance.

[istar]

A Nigerian emigrants community.

[Raoul Duke]

Well, as long as you stay away from camgirls lol