Bitcoin Forum

Recently, we reported that the giant Starbucks may accept Bitcoin as a payment in 2019. This came as a result after the august news, where Starbucks said that people may convert digital currencies at Starbucks into U.S. Dollars. Cointelegraph & QZ accurately reported what Starbucks wanted to say with their announcement:

“Rather the exchange will convert digital assets like Bitcoin into US dollars, which can be used at Starbucks.”

Which let’s face it, its even better than the news that people interpreted. So, Starbucks may not accept Bitcoin – probably due to the regulations & volatility. Instead, they will offer their customers the chance to convert Bitcoin into USD and purchase coffee – if they want. Basically, they will act as a Bitcoin ATM – which will convert the digital currency into FIAT and then let the client decide if they want to purchase a coffee or not. [.....]

https://zerocrypted.com/starbucks-bitcoin/ (https://zerocrypted.com/starbucks-bitcoin/)

The point that most people are missing is the global exposure that Bitcoin would be getting, by being in every Starbuck in the world. If you see the "Bitcoin Accepted here" sign in your favourite coffee shop, then that gives it more credibility with the general public.

It's all about building a recognised brand and once the Bitcoin symbol has achieved that, mass adoption will be closer than most people would expect. Yes, Starbucks might just use Bitcoin as a payment processor to convert Bitcoin to cash, but the hidden advantage of having it in every store, might outweigh the negative aspect of that.  ;)

I really don't get how one entity/establishment can increase the adoption for Bitcoin if its customers don't know what and how to use Bitcoin in the first place. Yes it could increase awareness on seeing Bitcoin payments are available to this establishment but does it also convince the customers to pay in Bitcoin as well?

A perfect example for this is Steam which had accepted Bitcoin previously in the past, even though their customers are most likely technologically inclined it didn't change the fact that paying BTC to load their wallet up is just one of the many options available to do so, it didn't made their customers switch to Bitcoin payments right away as it is not the intended effect on just adding a new payment method to the several options they already have. The most likely people benefiting from this are the ones who already have Bitcoin wallets at their hands.

I think most of the services accepting Bitcoin really expected it to significantly increase their revenue. Bitcoin continues to go up, made people very wealthy, and merchants probably thought to share in people's happiness.

They completely ignored how we have people holding Bitcoin not willing to spend their coins, because every purchase likely results in disappointment weeks or months later, because the price keeps going up.

The speculative nature of this market works against Bitcoin's currency aspect. It's not Bitcoin's fault, but people do blame it on Bitcoin because it was said to be a currency when they joined the industry. People don't realize how toxic they are themselves.

I'm pretty spend happy. That's because I earn a bit of BTC via sig campaigning. That's the difference. No one buys something to buy something and that's why there won't be any consumer adoption worth mentioning unless people are being paid in crypto too.

The only other time people may be willing to spend is when they have large amounts of gains, but of course many expect more so sit still.

I doubt significant amounts of people will ever receive their actual wages in crypto. The next likely avenue would be via cashback or some sort of loyalty scheme. Even then they're likely to stay put.

Merchant adoption may be more likely to take off in shithole economies, but then again they have an even stronger incentive not to spend it.

While it's very handy for those of us who are already balls deep, I think the outlook isn't looking too rosy for its use for day to day spending. It's certainly not on the up at least.

One thing to keep in mind though remember that Steam pulled out from accepting Bitcoin payments due to the massive surge of transaction fees it had during last year which rose from 20 cents to 20$ just to send a payment for buying a game which is not viable for them, no gamer in his right mind would buy a 19$-49.99$ game with a additional transaction cost of 20$. So it is really not about people not wanting to spend their BTC because they are saving it but it is about not sending BTC because it was not cheap as they use to during that time.

Merchant adoption during those time really took a hit as it had discouraged a lot of businesses on accepting BTC as a mode of payment due to high transaction cost. But hopefully transaction fees will stay considerably cheaper now and it would really help a lot on attracting back businesses to accept it again.

Indeed, but that was a fairly short period of time. It wasn't exploding before or after that either. 2014 was when it popped and it's been largely downhill since. I'm not super confident the fee thing has been anywhere near licked or ever will be.

Don't forget to pay your capital gains on that lol. Seriously though, would buying a cup of coffee worth the paperwork.

Will they use a payment tool that requires kyc? Don't forget you can use services like egifter to get giftcards. You can also buy discounted giftcards on P2P places like paxful or LocalBTC (be careful with that one)

It's not that complicated because you're not paying with Bitcoin directly. You'd sell BTC for USD on Bakkt. That's a taxable event, as with a sale on any other exchange. The cups of coffee you buy out of your USD balance aren't taxable in terms of capital gains.


I'm assuming this is all through Bakkt, and I think Bakkt will require KYC.

Good points. Its a bit like chicken and the egg. Getting a salary paid in bitcoin
is pretty usless unless you are living at home with your parents and not contributing
to any bills. But if you are a home owner, tennant, have a young family, have a car,
or any other responsibilities getting paid in crypto is useless because eventually
it will have to be converted to FIAT.

Such huge and well known net of cafes as Starbucks could become brilliant promotion for crypto payments. I hope it's not just another fud to make people invest in bitcoin with huge hopes. The situation is on the market is negative and people should to be realists in their expectations.

I've remembered last year about the sudden surge of Fees correlates together with bitcoins price. Removing BTC in payment options on steam do really affects me as a player.I already appreciate
when the time they do consider it on their options but removed it suddenly due for that reason. Unless if LN would be there then i dont see any problems with fees when the price tends to shoot up once again.


Fud or not but this wont still be a big news that can give out some affect but somehow a good step-up if they wont decide to revert later on.

but even if they do start accepting bitcoin how is that going to work when you have to wait 10-15 minutes for the transaction to be confirmed... i can imagine the chaos at the till
it would be like 'can i have a latte and a scone and i'll be back in 10-15 min to collect after you get the coins'  ;D

it may not result in much promotion. it sounds like starbucks won't be accepting bitcoin at the register (or even online at their store), so customers won't be exposed to it.

there's just going to be a payment rail (bakkt) where you can exchange bitcoins for USD that can be used at starbucks. it might be integrated with the existing gift card system.

if you look at things from another angle we can see this news as something very good, I'll almost repeat what @Kakmakr said, this is something good in the sense that it will attract more attention to bitcoin, people will be curious to know what is bitcoin and how it is used and governments will be able to see that it may be possible to use bitcoin as a means of payments, not only governments like banks will also have the opportunity to look bitcoin with good eyes. We need big companies to use bitcoin even if it's in an indirect way