Bitcoin Forum

I'm having a coffee with Jet Cash, and we are discussing the recent fake news about Starbucks. He doesn't see how any cafe could accept Bitcoin in payment for a coffee. Well maybe if you use Lightning network, but a regular Bitcoin payment doesn't seem viable. Ignoring the issue of high fees, the confirmation time seems to be the problem. With average block creation times of around 10 minutes, it can take up to 20 minutes or so for a transaction to get into a block, and that is providing that it gets into the next creation, and it isn't an orphan. That seems far too long if you are waiting in a payment queue.

I see so many people wetting their pants because some fast food chain is rumoured to be accepting Bitcoin, but I can't see it ever happening. Can you see a way for the cafe to start accepting Bitcoin?

I pay a Starbucks coffee using bitcoin once. You can buy a Starbucks gift card with Bitcoin Cash. Then use it in a coffee-shop and you will get your cherished latte in a Siren logo cup. Starbucks is so cryptocurrency-friendly.

There are several places in London where you can pay for your coffee or lunch with Bitcoin. There is even a cafe that has a bitcoin ATM in it. I am not sure how well it workis in the real world but I cannot see if replacing contact less payments which are instant.

You don't need to have the cafés accepting Bitcoin, you only need a cryptocurrency debit card supporting Bitcoin. Here's the best cryptocurrency debit card list (https://www.cryptowisser.com/debit-cards/) for you. :)

All the best,
Cryptowisser

Bitcoin in my country cannot be used for any living expenses, although I hope that cryptocurrency can replace cash, but it seems far away!

Wasn't there recently even the news about the shops of a whole town now accepting cryptopayments? Did you actively search for shops that might accept crypto in your city? You might be surprised that some of them already do.

It will not make sense untill the price of bitcoin will remain on the same level and will not be so volatile.

;D I like that one haha.


If I pay by chip and pin it takes 3 days minimum to go through, I don't camp in McDonald's every time I get a drink there...

Restaurants also give you a plate with a reciept/invoice and you generally put your money+tip underneath that reciept and leave (at least that's the general practice I know).

Why would I want to pay with Bitcoin for a coffee. There is fiat or debit/credit cards for that. Bitcoin is too precious to be spent on coffee. I don't want to repeat the story of buying 2 pizzas with 10000 Bitcoins :P

Besides, speed of transaction and fee doesn't make it a good viable option.

But it confirms almost immediately, and it is guaranteed. There are not guarantees with Bitcoin until you have got a few hours worth of confirmations.

I can see how it would work if you buy a gift card, and then use that for the purchase.

There is no such thing as a Bitcoin debit card. There is a pseudo-bank exchange service that will make the payment for you in fiat, but that isn't peer to peer.

Or you could get a pre-pay/pre-order system where you get a discount if you pay for your coffee in advance the night before (as then it helps them know the number that will be made).

And the gift card thing also. Although it isn't confirmed beforehand, well it is but you can still cancel it.

I don't think it is important, there is lots of coins I can pay for coffee and also if btc is not suitable for such things it really does not lose anything. It is rather digital gold.

For this to be debatable for Bitcoin , lightening protocol need to be implemented for us to know the time it takes to confirm transactions.

Dash have a real life scenario of buying coffee with their coin.you might wanna check it out.

the real question is why would you buy coffee with bitcoin? why not pay cash for example. if you can find a valid reason for it and then if there is real demand then there is nothing stopping cafes from accepting bitcoin payments. the only reason why there aren't already is only one thing and one thing only: lack of demand.

transaction fees have only been high for a small period of time compared to the total lifespan of bitcoin.
and confirmation time is not a problem. as a business when you are accepting payment through any method you expect a certain level of fraud. cash, checks, credit cards,.... all have their own risks but you can't not accept them because there is a possibility that you may receive fake cash, get paid with stolen credit card or have your bitcoin payment double spent.
with that said the cases i have heard of in real world (like a food truck in US) they never cared about confirmation, they accepted payment and never got scammed.
additionally there are ways of doing a "risk analysis" when you receive a payment (something that is impossible to do when receiving other forms of payment!) and your cashier can kindly ask the payer to increase the fee for example if they paid with 0.1 s/b instead of 1 or send you a payment with an unconfirmed parent. but these things aren't common.

i don't see this as that unlikely at this point and it will eventually happen in the future so the question is only when not if. as i mentioned above it is only about demand and nothing else.

It is true that regular Bitcoin payment method does not look viable for the quick services. If we put LN out of question (seems fair enough as it is still in testing phase)  then subscription can be viable method for these kind of services. (where user prepaid for 30 coffee).

But real challenge is not how to pay the coffee but  what you are paying for coffee.  I do not think as  a coffee lover you will like the idea of daily calculating the price of your coffee in bitcoin vs  fixed price in fiat. Bitcoin need to be mass adopted to solve the price fluctuation problem where worth of bitcoin is not pegged with any fiat currency and we can independently purchase articles on fixed price of bitcoin.

Without any LN or a system that can scale current system TPS and confirmation time, buying a coffee is feasible but not convenient.
 

Take a look at this video,they use ethereum to buy coffee in starbucks.crypto to product with no fees

https://youtu.be/LXnBEor6440

I think bitcoin was not made to use for a direct peer to peer micropayments transactions.but using crypto apps like this I think soon we can use our btcs in small transactions like in the video.

I really hope to use cryptocurrencies in my life, but the truth is that Bitcoin is not available in my country! It can't be used as a way to pay!

Hmm, isn't this what litecoin was really all about - speeding up blocktimes and faster transactions and maybe a payment method that was technological improvement to btc. Also someone comment about bitcoincash card that you can buy in Starbucks. For me, makes whole process more complicated. I have seen projects like TenX will POS and accompanying card. One company really needs to make a functional crypto payment system that works. We will never get adoption unless this becomes a thing and people use only crypto for speculating and nothing more which is a shame.

Maybe that cafe is in a tourist place, and it is difficult for its customers to convert the currency in each country, so they pay by bitcoin.
I can order coffee and pay first then get my order, as well as in restaurants, barbershops, and others. "I think we stay more than 10 minutes in those places."


Price volatility is the main reason why these places do not accept bitcoin as there is a constant income to manage the business. "The idea of relying on bitcoin seems to be a big risk; you may lose half of the revenue because of the price change."


The lack of positive news is the reason; it has been a long time without hearing any positive news, so everyone is trying to look for any good news.

It could also be a problem if you wallet is on a full node, and you have to sync it on your laptop before you can pay. If the restaurant has WiFi, allows for internet ordering, and offers table service, then that could work.

you don't need to sync a full node to spend unless you are too far behind and don't have the transaction output that you want to spend.
for example if total blocks are 60000 and you have until 50000 as long as the UTXO you want to spend is from anywhere below 50000 and you have not spent it before you can still make a transaction and broadcast it easily.

Or you could just use the console to sign and broadcast the transaction using the inputs from a block explorer? :)

Bitcoin is sort of a wildcard when it comes to in the line payments as if legality is not a problem it will always be up to the business owner if they want to accept Bitcoin as a mode of payment. Altcoins on the other hand have a better chance, some altcoin developers are always partnering up with other companies to make their token unique or provide a better payment system compared to Bitcoin. If they partner up the right restaurant or fast food chain expect that altcoin to be used in that establishment.

Look like original discussion (How to purchase coffee using bitcoin) is now moving to different direction. Using Altcoin will never equal to using the bitcoin.
I think we should wait for LN to be fully functional.

Actually buying a coffee with BTC might not be the Satoshi priority. Satoshi was working for a Peer to Peer currency not for Peer to Business currency.
So further enhancement and development needed for BTC to be successful as peer to business currency.

It will be possible with lightning network.

Even without lightning network, the risk of double spending a $2 transaction for coffee is low. There are online stores that require 0 confirmations for low amount transactions (under $20), even though waiting 10 minutes isnt a problem for online purchases.

As people said, it could also be possible to buy giftcards with bitcoin (e.g. for grocery stores, electronics stores, where waiting 10 minutes could be annoying). Personally I would be happy to buy a giftcard for groceries, electronics, restaurants, etc. with bitcoin.

In the next future, you will be able to pay everything, not only a coffee, in Bitcoin.

yeah as long as you trust that block explorer to be correct and without bugs.
and if we start talking about possibilities then there are lots of them. for example you should technically be able to use BIP37 or bloom filters to get what you need from the nodes in a decentralized way. or figure out how Electrum nodes communicate and just send a request to one of them asking for your transaction history!

Answering your last question. I would say we probably will see a cafe, using a cryptocurrency as a payment method, but it is not obligatory a btc, but may it be the other crypto. Who knows...

In fact, merchants in many places accept Bitcoin as a means of payment, but such merchants are not spread all over the world! So it is unrealistic to want to buy goods at any time with Bitcoin!

I think it is definitely possible to pay for a coffee with bitcoin. I remember there are already some stores, both local stores and online stores accept bitcoin as a payment. There will be more and more such stores in the future. There is a korean restaurant near where I live accept bitcoin and bitcoin cash as payment.

personally i think i can pay for a beer with electroneum in liverpool before i can pay a coffee with BTC in london. we have been waiting many years for a payment with btc and nothing happened yet.

What do you mean? It already happened multiple times.

Search for "buying coffee bitcoin" on youtube and there will be multiple examples of it. Even buying coffee with the Lightning Network is possible[1]. On the other side, who would accept "electroneum" for a beer?

[1] https://twitter.com/danielalexiuc/status/993667149238435840

I think the question should look like this:
When buying coffee for bitcoin will become commonplace?
This will require the implementation of such second layer solutions as Lightning network or Rootstock