Bitcoin Forum

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With a scenic old town, a sprawling economy (apparently the second richest city in Eastern Europe), and around 500k inhabitants Bratislava is the city with the world's highest concentration of physical brick and mortar businesses accepting Bitcoin. I'm not 100% sure of the veracity of this, but www.coinmap.org shouldn't be too bad of an indicator.

According to the website there are 13 physical businesses accepting Bitcoin in the Bratislava city centre including several restaurants, bars, cafés and music scenes. A stone's throw away from Vienna, Bratislava is easy to get to, both by rail and air. In fact, it should be a perfect place for a wealthy Bitcoiner to spend a long weekend, thus increasing the BTC economy there and help increasing the Bitcoin cluster seemingly already established there.

I recently read the Forbes article series Living on Bitcoin for a week (http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/05/01/living-on-bitcoin-for-a-week-the-journey-begins/) where San Franciscan and journalist Kashmir Hill tries to live only on Bitcoin for a whole week. The article series is great fun to read and extremely fascinating. This brings me to realise the importance of brick and mortar Bitcoin businesses. Because you can actually see them, touch them, enter them and speak to real people there it helps bring Bitcoin from some far away abstract concept and into the real world.

I think brick and mortar businesses accepting Bitcoin is an important hurdle, if not the most important hurdle on the way to mass adoption of Bitcoin. It is simply the required step for ordinary people to understand Bitcoin in the same way they understand fiat money - the way they use it every day.

So I'm posing the following questions:

Have you ever checked out Bitcoin businesses in Bratislava?
What do you think of Kashmir Hills article series? Is it a good way to introduce people to Bitcoin?
What do you think is the importance of physical brick and mortar businesses accepting Bitcoin in terms of mass adoption?

there are probably more than 13 brick and mortar businesses accepting bitcoins in san francisco, if you have been following the forbes blogger living on bitcoins for a week


go USA

I've always wanted to visit Vienna, but this looks like the place to stay and spend some of those hard-earned, err... mined coins! :) 

I want to get shops around me to accept bitcoins for several reasons:
if bitcoin takes off, I want them to profit and ride the wave as the gurus that knew it since long
I want to be able to spend bitcoins
… and, yes, the shops accepting bitcoins also evangelize to new users but that's also a bit of a problem. When somebody unfamiliar with credit cards does his first credit card purchase, the vendor would think "why me? Can't he learn swiping a card somewhere else" while with bitcoin, the vendor would be in this situation in just about 90% of all sales. He would have to be an enthusiast.

Come on. Have you read the series?

If I remember correctly there is
the cupcake bakery,
the sushi restaurant,
the three artisanal grocery stores that opened as a consequence of the article,
the two rent-a-place,
the guy who sells tshirts,
the psychiatrist and
the chiropractor.

And not all of these are in San Francisco city centre but spread out in the Bay area. Even so it counts up to less than 13. If there are 13 businesses in Bratislava on coinmaps, then maybe there are some that are not on there yet like in Frisco.

Edit: On coinmap there are only four businesses registered in San Francisco city centre as of now.

This is why it is perfect for smaller mom & pop or artisanal style shops that might have more time for this kind of thing. Besides, if as a business you don't take treating all your customers well you will lose out.

Imagine if you treat a first time Bitcoin payer to a good experience, he/she is likely to come again and do more shopping...and if you're lucky tell his or her friends about the shop (and about Bitcoin).

The East is the New Wild West!

I think it’s very good for business in a city like Bratislava to accept Bitcoins. In this way, even people that spend a couple of days in Bratislava, don’t need to change foreigner currency in Euro, but they can use their mobile phone for Bitcoins payment. Much more simple…

Here in The Netherlands, The Chipknip, an electronic cash system that have been used for small digital  transactions, is going to disappear. People nowadays find it much easier to pay by credit cards, debit cards or even by mobile phones. Bitcoins fit in this development.

So The Netherlands is one of the countries with the highest penetration of Bitcoin-qt clients in the world. Have you noticed yet?

although people think the san fransisco media hype makes bitcoin a big deal for mainstraim proof. well it was a nice way to spread the name bitcoin around in a positive manner. but in reality the reporter used third party services mostly to survive, EG foodler. where the actual bricks-and-mortar stores that are linked to foodler would not take bitcoin direct instore, or even had a clue what a bitcoin was.

bitcoin news should be about the actual walk down the street and pass bitcoins onto the actual shop keeper... That there would be the true point at which bitcoin is definitely going manstream.

which makes places in europe seem more bitcoin friendly, such as the OP's research shows

i still don't know how do you pay in bitcoins...
do you have an app?
what if you lose your phone or get malware inside? is safe?
what apps are safe?

I use blockchain.info (https://blockchain.info/wallet/android-app)

The way it works is simple. You go to a merchant that accepts bitcoin. You negotiate a price. The merchant presents you with a bitcoin address to send a payment to. The easiest way to do this is to show you a QR code that you can then scan using your phone. You send the required bitcoins and leave the store with your goodies.


What happens if you lose your wallet or purse? Advice: only keep as much cash on you as you intend to spend. Don't keep your life savings in your wallet or purse, and definitely don't keep your entire bitcoin stash accessible from your phone. Suppose that you do lose your phone though. You would still be able to access your blockchain.info wallet from the website directly and retrieve any balance you had saved. Anyone that finds your phone isn't going to get the coins right away unless they know what they are doing. Access to the app is going to require a 4 digit pin, and after a number of incorrect attempts (5, I think), then you need to enter the full password.

The recommendation here is to have a phone-only wallet that has a small balance.

Apparently one of the most quoted think thanks in Slovakia (of which the capital is Bratislava) are accepting Bitcoin, INESS. http://4liberty.eu/slovak-think-tank-iness-has-started-accepting-bitcoin-donations/

When checking out their website (http://iness.sk/stranka/5031) one can see that they every year make a Bill of Government Services which is a reciept of government expenditure so that every person can see where and to what their taxes are spent. Also their flagship is called The Price of the State. Apparently they also have a public web database of state waste.

So these guys seem fairly anti-government. But my point is not that, my point is that they seem to be getting a lot of attention in Slovakia and that they accept Bitcoin donations (http://iness.sk/stranka/6781-Podporte-INESS.html). They could actually be helping Bitcoin to gain legitimacy in Slovakia.

What a beautiful city.  It's like Bitcoin heaven.

This is one beautiful city!

So are the women and the beer!

I guess people in general (let alone semi-computer-illiterate people) find it difficult to understand Bitcoin. This would cause them to just leave it alone, they don't need it, so why would they bother wasting time learning what it is etc. However, if they see that shops that they visit regularly are accepting Bitcoin, they'll be more inclined to delve into it a bit further. At the very least, the shop accepting Bitcoins will spark discussion between patrons, which will lead to them spreading knowledge.

I will open Bitcoin training shops in every city. Wait a second... Someone should actially establish a Bitcoin retail store, I could supply all the merchandise needed from Cryptocondoms to Bitcoin T-shirts! :P

A centralised information hub/retail store where you can purchase goods/services using only Bitcoins. That would be pretty cool. Oh, and a sign that reads "No fiat allowed".

Working on Starting a Bitcoin town here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=216139.0

I can attest to that!
We went there a few weeks ago for a couple of interviews with the local Bitcoin crowd and met at Bratislava's hackspace "progressbar.sk".
Our main character lives there btw..

Where are they?

Currently I can find only 2 businesses in Bratilsava, on CoinMap.

Ciao!

Broke most likely. Like Meze Grill.

?

I can't understand. What do you mean?

It's crucial for mass adoption, but don't ignore the difference between "Bitcoin-only" & "accepting Bitcoin."
If the bodega down the street excepted only peso, i'd certainly know the MXN<->USD rate, and have some pesos handy for emergencies like running out of smokes or raspberry pop tarts.
If, OTH, the bodega simply accepted peso along with $, my life wouldn't change one bit -- i'd continue using the dollar & have no incentive for dealing with peso.

Very interesting!! It is only a matter of time until everyone realizes the Powaa!!!

Thanks for the read OP :D

No one pays with bitcoin. Everyone hoards them. So businesses who offer payment as a last ditch effort to avoid going bankrupt will not actually benefit and die anyways.

Ok, now I understand.

So, really were there 13 businesses in Bratislava reported by OSM/CoinMap?

Slovakia is a country that has seen lots of change those past 20 years, so the people there may be more open to new things than in some other places where everything has been staying the same for decades.

I havent been to bratislavia but I can tell you that eastern europe in general is full of people with a high amount of distrust of banking and the goverment.  Bitcoin gives them a way to securely buy things online and will be a huge boom for them.

Sorry to let you down but I know this city very well and besides the one place already mentioned (progress bar, which is not actually a bar but a flat turned into a kind of hackerspace) there are no businesses accepting Bitcoin there (or I must have missed them somehow..). Sure wish there were. So far the Bitcoin capital of the world has to be Berlin. Or maybe San Francisco.

EDIT: there are a bunch of other organizations starting to accept Bitcoin like the one organizing a yearly Vegan festival a coalition lobbying for improvement of biking conditions in the city or a 3d printing lab. No bars/restaurants or shops and the like, though.

btw as for "beautiful city" you forgot to show what the other side of the Danube looks like  ;D

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-kHmCEtca32o/TkAr8WKU_0I/AAAAAAAAAII/gYh-U2G9Re0/s400/Panel%25C3%25A1k%2Bcolour%2Bpetrzalka.jpg

As I know, the Slovakia has no Euro (don't confuse it with Slovenia). How do the people here receive and exchange Bitcoins?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Slovakia