An old-school arcade, in the retirement capital of New Zealand no less, complete with Pac-Man, pinball and teddy bear claw machines, has started using cryptocurrency.
And actually, it's not that cryptic. Gamers at the Arcadia, in Blenheim, just need the bitcoin app on their smartphones.
The amount they want is entered into the till, a unique code is scanned with their phone, they hit 'pay' and they're away.
Customers are then given tokens to slot into the machines.
Scoon's son Adam Scoon, the mastermind behind bringing bitcoin to the arcade, said he anticipated everyone would be using bitcoin in the future.
"It is getting more and more attention and more people are learning about it and getting into it which pushes its value up even more, we think that eventually everyone will be using it to pay for everything," Adam Scoon said.
University of Canterbury senior lecturer of finance Bill Rea said bitcoin was a "highly secure" form of transferring money.
"It does offer quite a secure way to do transactions," Rea said.
It did however require some technology and IT skills, he said.
More companies and individuals were starting to pick it up as a form of transaction.
"[But] your corner dairy is probably not going to be using it anytime soon," he said.
Source:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/98948778/.html
