Bitcoin Forum

http://meidanklinikka.fi/

As you can see from the frontpage, they accept Bitcoins! This is awesome. One can now use Bitcoins to pay for a dentist. Unfortunately this is in  Helsinki, Finland so the number of users is limited to finnish bitcoiners.

That's awesome.

Bitcoin is evolving pretty well in Finland, Finland is always on the top on google trends etc.

Also recently there was a short TV spot about Bitcoin in Finnish TV. In the spot Chief Officer of Finnish central bank stated that it is perfectly legal to use bitcoins. That should improve some confidence :)

wow. i would really like to see that clip, even if its in finnish.the word of a head of central bank has some weight.

It was a spokeperson of the finish central bank, not the head. Still impressive !
Here's the link (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=100924.0)

Well, direct translation would be "chief officer" but maybe it would be more like "chief secretary"... Probably not the head, but important person anyway :)

Linux also = awesome

Bitcoin = awesome

Bitcoin = awesome in Finland (Vegemesta restaurant in Helsinki accepting Bitcoin (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=94384.0))

Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux is from Finland.

Hmm.. What is it about Finland?

They drink a lot. It is well known that alcohol kills the weakest and slowest brain cells first, and one can only think as fast as his slowest cells can.

It's cold as hell; un-awesome Finish ancestors probably died off.


Anyway I think larger transactions might be some of the first where BTC is used and not as some might expect your daily purchases.
It is simply easier to convince people to use something new if the amount is bigger and not that often.

This means dentists, rent, cars, paycheck and maybe your food if you make a monthly/exclusive deal with one vendor. Usually this also means smaller more flexible businesses and not big hospitals, banks or super markets.

BTC/fiat conversion is still pricey at ~10% so if BTC has become your new bank account there is a strong incentive to replace the currency  of even a few of your bills.

I'll drink to that (http://xkcd.com/323/)!

10%? What?

Our Finnish exchange, for example, has 2% fees. As far as I know it's the cheapest local exchange anywhere, usually the fees are 5%+. On top of that we use multiple exchanges to get the best price possible.

I will write an article on this soon, with both Finnish and English info. This is the first dentist office in the world to accept bitcoins for payment. Our joint program with Bitpay is just getting started.

Looking forward to that.

Was this someone you had talked to personally (and persuaded to take bitcoin as payment)?

Well, sort of. They approached us thanks to the large publicity that Bitcoin has been getting in Finland lately. We met on Thursday and I showed them how it works. We immediately opened a Bitpay account and the next day they announced that they are accepting Bitcoin payments. It's actually amazing how fast it's possible to start accepting bitcoins as payment.

Here is the article. It's written both in Finnish and English.

https://bittiraha.fi/content/nyt-voit-käydä-hammaslääkärissä-ja-maksaa-bitcoineilla (https://bittiraha.fi/content/nyt-voit-käydä-hammaslääkärissä-ja-maksaa-bitcoineilla)

Sooner or later a Bitcoin traveller covered under private insurance will get their service here and pay with bitcoins. It'll be interesting to see how the reimbursement works out. Long time ago someone claimed on this forum that they had some goods paid for in btc and shipped to Greece or Cyprus, with btc-denominated invoice. Customs clerks looked it up, found out the exchange rate, and everything went smoothly, like with any other currency.

Obviously there are differences from country to country.

I had to pay around 9.6% to move funds into mtgox using a SEPA transaction and then into BTC. That took around 2 weeks.

Recently I used Bitcoin Nordic who charge 9% and are faster. So yeah things are improving, but I think for many BTC/fiat conversion is costly.

Just wanted to chime in on the awesomeness of Finland. I've worked with some finns, they were awesome, Linus Torvalds is awesome, and they have great metal bands and now they're embracing bitcoins. Awesome. Perhaps I should move there! :)

Check the weather before you do ;)

Ya, live in a neighbour country, so no worries. :) Btw, think I'll rather move somewhere with a sub tropical climate. :)

+18C and some clouds. I'd say not bad at all!

Finland vodka (http://www.finlandia.com) is awesome too

Yeah, but that's what they call summer :)

I added the dentist to the wiki (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade#Other_3) btw. Not sure the Trade page is well organized though. I'd suggest to make a page for each business and put the businesses into all relevant categories. This way the Category:Trade would contain them all, while the Category:Health would contain the Dentist …

that good news,
maybe someday each indusry accepted the bitcoin.