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November 23, 2013, 11:53:38 PM |
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Had my first retail experience with bitcoins and thought I would share it to get some perspective.
I saw in the local paper Coupa Cafe has been taking Bitcoin for a few months. Bought an omelette and some drinks, it came to $38. i asked about paying in Bitcoin.
First observation: it feels awkward to ask this. Geeky like. It takes some guts to hold up the line and make a special exception.
The cashier knew about Bitcoin but didn't know how to deal with it, said she would have to get her manager, who came over a few minutes later with a cell phone. I had since noticed the cash register said "$38" and then below it "0.098 bitcoins" on a separate line and I knew that exchange rate was over 2x wrong, in Coupa Cafe's favor.
Second observation: working in mBTC (maybe "millies" eventually to the public) is a requirement. I had trouble parsing "0.098" so general public for sure would. "96 millies" would work a lot better.
I knew as of today we're getting close to $1/mBTC ($850/BTC) so I knew 96 millies was crazy wrong. But I was there for the experience so I went with it. $80 omelette and coffee. (But I had paid $285 for this bitcoin so what the heck)
They pointed to the QR posted crooked on a little dingy sign on the cash register. I aimed my phone at it, poof, came up no problem. That part worked great.
I had expected them to have some way of generating a QR code that would have included not only their address but also the amount they wanted, so I would have just scanned that and then clicked "ok". That's not the way it worked. I had to type in an amount.
Trying to see if I could squeeze a more reasonable deal, I chose to enter the $38 USD amount instead of the bitcoins, and I showed it to them by flipping my phone around on the counter. The phone translated that to 0.046 BTC.
Third observation: the "send" delay was fast. To my understanding of a quick point-to-point transaction like this I had read you don't have to wait a bitcoin network confirmation time (that would kill any point of sale). So that part seemed fine. The unconfirmed transaction showed up on his screen pretty fast (ten seconds?)
But then whatever wallet software he was running on his phone showed only the 0.046 BTC that I sent. Either he or the software knew this was not what the cash register wanted, and he asked me to send more. He couldn't do the math in his head, so we had an awkward moment when I didn't really want to pay $80 for the omelette, and I debated getting into a discussion of exchange rates with him, but I finally capitulated to the growing line behind me and said ok I'll send over another 0.052 BTC.
Fourth observation: I had thought somehow the "system" (BTC peer software or some convention of scraping the major exchanges at least) would create a well-accepted exchange rate (my bitcoin wallet on android phone does the conversion and it appeared so built-in I thought that would be the case universally). Not true at all. It looks like every merchant can set their own exchange rate. And you can bet it will be in their favor, way more than the few percent you might get as a cash discount saving them MC/Visa processing fees. In this case it was more than 2x wrong.
My second "send" went through as smoothly as the first, at least on my phone (few seconds), but he spent some time (minute or so) looking at his phone to make sure it was ok before I could gracefully walk away from the counter with my $80 omelette.
So I don't know--we are way early, lots of work to do both technically (integrating it into the POS system) and socially (making me not feel weird asking to pay in bitcoin, even to a store that got press in silicon valley as a VC hangout on the leading edge). Both solvable for sure, but it's a ways out yet.
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