He will have much better luck begging for dollars instead.
Why do you think that? unless of course you don't like bitcoin..
He will encounter 100's of people with dollars. He might encounter 1 or 2 people with bitcoins.
You're missing the point completely here... he wouldn't get noticed begging for dollars.. Him begging for Bitcoin says a few thing about him.
1) He's smart enough to know what bitcoin is and how to use it at least.. which is good in my book.
2) He now has a huge audience online (500k+ views on reddit and a few news outlets covered the story) just because he was begging for bitcoins and not dollars. And THAT is getting him a lot more donations he would've ever gotten begging for dollars.
cheers!
Yes it is awesome but the tricky thing is that this is only possible with the coverage. Now if more people started panhandling for Bitcoins and it became a fairly common occurrence, I don't think this will have the great effect that it has in this story. Remember, it only gets coverage because it's different.