Bitcoin Forum

Hi,

I live in New Zealand and am considering opening up physical store that only deals in the more prominent cryptocurrencies.  I plan to open it in one of our biggest tourist towns Queenstown, which gets around 100,000 overseas visitors a year, and who like most of us that travel overseas are sick of foreign exchange fees and credit card fees. 

I would like to know what anyone thinks of this idea bad or good thanks.

Thanks.

any exposure is good

I wish they would do stuff like this in the US... We could really use some physical stores.

I believe physical stores could be more prevalent in the future if the first few open up in popular tourist destinations, as I mentioned before fees for credit cards and foreign exchange are ridiculous. Being able to travel from one country to another and not having to deal with banks would be advantageous in many ways.

How many physical stores are there yet?

How are they doing?

From what I have researched, there are no physical shops  out there yet; however it is not to say there aren't,  I just haven't found any in the 2 months I have been researching this concept. Noticing the trend toward online retailers using bitcoin and the pick they have had from it, I would like to believe that there maybe a market for such stores in the near future.  Only my opinion though, I would like a thorough discussion to sort out props and cons.

I think it would be a good idea if you could find a way to deal with the bitcoin price fluctuations. It halves in value then goes back to double quite often. You could have customers paying half the amount they did the week before if you used fixed prices.

If you altered the prices each day to account for bitcoin/usd exchange rate fluctuations it could be a way around this. I'm sure your concept would be very popular.

I'd say go for it. Any exposure BTC gets is good and physical stores can add legitimacy to BTC which is what is needed  ;)

Queenstown is a gorgeous place to visit, and any excuse to go back there is good :)

The horrible exchange rates were actually one of the memorable things about a ski trip I had there.

Do they still have that fergburger place? Should get those guys accepting bitcoins!

Very good idea to make this "virtual currency" more real. i'm really looking forward to it...

Indeed Queenstown is a beautiful place, and yes we still have Fergburger, mate you should of seen it on newyears eve lines back up for a block. That is a brilliant idea about setting them up with a bitcoin exchange of some sort it us bloody popular with tourist.

I have also been working on the exchange rate issues what with the volatile fluctuations of cryptocurrencies, and talking to a few forex brokers there are methods to keep in check with the fluctuations as what banks do, but I still have some research on some to do on the matter.

Thanks for the feedback people, I really appreciate it. If you guys have anymore ideas, questions or feedback or have had spoken to anyone else about this who had some ideas or opinions please come back to this thread.

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What goods would you like to offer? I think it's a great idea, just thought yesterday about how one day supermarkets could handle cryptocurrencies.
I guess you won't be able to make traditional fix prices with paper labels on the shelves though :P You will need monitors that always show the "live" price adapted to current exchange rates.
Paying could work (like in some of the ATMs) with QR-Codes and mobile phone apps.

PS: Finally writing my first post here, I built a rig one month ago and am interested in the whole bitcoin-thing since 2012 :)

How many of these are already out there?

Physical cryptocurrency can boost this market if they come in a reliable form and of course if you are a trustfull coiner. Otherwise it will sure fail.