casascius (OP)
Mike Caldwell
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The Casascius 1oz 10BTC Silver Round (w/ Gold B)
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April 01, 2012, 02:22:15 AM |
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...and the "Bitcoin Accepted Here" sticker isn't there anymore.
How sad, I came all that way to eat and pay with Bitcoin!
It seemed they might have accepted if I pushed them to accept it, part of why they seemed hesitant was that it seemed difficult and cumbersome to them. They still had a full piece of laminated paper with a QR code of their Bitcoin address... but my take on it was the owner wasn't there, and the guy working there was reluctant to deal with processing a Bitcoin transaction and seemed to know nothing more about Bitcoin than the QR code.
Would have been nice if they had Bit-Pay, and have a bitcoin transaction pop up on all their mobile phones at the same time, denominated in dollars, so someone with no clue or interest in BTC could still accept them no matter who was working.
An electronic transaction wouldn't have worked for me anyway since the only BTC I had ready access to were Casascius Coins. I was carrying two 5BTC bitnickels, four 1BTC coins, and a 25BTC coin. The guy there seemed like he had never seen them before, I was very sad he wasn't eager to feed me for them. The food was damn good though, worth going back for even if not for BTC.
I left a couple Casascius Coins in the tip jar. And I gave him the 25 BTC coin (but ripped off the private key, so I just gifted them the medallion and kept the BTC). Figured that was the least I can do for the support they have lent to BTC thus far.
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Companies claiming they got hacked and lost your coins sounds like fraud so perfect it could be called fashionable. I never believe them. If I ever experience the misfortune of a real intrusion, I declare I have been honest about the way I have managed the keys in Casascius Coins. I maintain no ability to recover or reproduce the keys, not even under limitless duress or total intrusion. Remember that trusting strangers with your coins without any recourse is, as a matter of principle, not a best practice. Don't keep coins online. Use paper or hardware wallets instead.
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No Gods or Kings. Only Bitcoin
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bitcoinbetas
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April 01, 2012, 02:23:12 AM |
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Sorry to hear that ...I would be really frustrated if I couldn't pay in bitcoin!
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finway
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April 01, 2012, 02:26:50 AM |
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Sad to hear that.
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stick_theman
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April 01, 2012, 02:30:11 AM |
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Aw.... come on Bruce!!! Where are you. I always wanted to go check out the Grill...
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buybtc
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April 01, 2012, 02:30:34 AM |
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Phinnaeus Gage
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Bitcoin: An Idea Worth Spending
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April 01, 2012, 02:58:16 AM |
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Aw.... come on Bruce!!! Where are you. I always wanted to go check out the Grill...
Meze Grill owner found out the truth about Bruce, and opt to punish the whole community by...  No accept Bitcoin for one year! |
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teflone
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April 01, 2012, 03:35:58 AM |
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Boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooooooooooo...
Very sad...
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da2ce7
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Live and Let Live
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April 01, 2012, 03:53:15 AM |
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Remember the videos of cafe's getting their website removed from their windows after the 2000 dot.com bust?
But notice how the internet has become a key part of life?
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One off NP-Hard.
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Littleshop
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April 01, 2012, 05:35:52 AM |
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I would skip the Meze grill if they don't take bitcoin. When I went with the NYC convention the food was ok but the service was quite bad. NYC is full of excellent restaurants.
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Shuai
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April 01, 2012, 09:41:41 AM |
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This is not their fault, this is our fault.
Clearly there are not enough people who pay with Bitcoin to make it profitable for the restaurant to accept the currency. Too much hassle for close to zero benefit.
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BitPay Business Solutions
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April 01, 2012, 10:21:08 AM |
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It's the chicken and egg problem.
I have the same issue with Whiskey Dicks. There are two managers trained to use our Mobile checkout, but if they are not working, they will ask you to pay another way.
Right now it's just our regular meetup group that uses it. But once they see enough demand we can train their whole staff. So my suggestion is bring larger groups when you know the correct staff is there. we gotta walk before we run.
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BitPay : The World Leader in Bitcoin Business Solutions https://bitpay.comDoes your website accept bitcoins? |
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cunicula
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April 01, 2012, 10:26:54 AM |
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Too much hassle for close to zero benefit.
Fixed that for you. More seriously, think about it. Probably the only option for adoption is to bribe the shop and bribe the shop's costumers. No taxes collected around here so it depends on private charity. Which one of you libertarians is good for a few million USD worth of handouts for 'economic stimulus'? Oh, don't like handouts do you. Don't like stimulus either. Hmm.. Well, it is up to the 'free market'. We will see how that goes. I will see you in a year still talking up the same alpaca socks. |
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blablahblah
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April 01, 2012, 10:59:36 AM |
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Too much hassle for close to zero benefit.
Fixed that for you. The merchant saves on Visa/Mastercard + banking fees when using bitcoin. Please stop spreading FUD. |
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BubbleBoy
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April 01, 2012, 11:05:11 AM |
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As much as I dislike being cunicula's sockpuppet, bitcoin retail purchases are dead in the water.
Think about PayPal. They have hundreds of millions of individual accounts. They are accepted by hundreds of thousands of online retailers. Yet, do you know of any restaurant where you are able to pay with your PayPal balance using a custom PayPal checkout solution ? That's because even for PayPal the network effects are too faint to compete with the credit card oligopoly.
Instead, PayPal issues it's own credit card, so you are able to pay using your PayPal balance while using the de facto payment standard - credit cards. Bitcon's network effect is thousands of time fainter than PayPal's, it can barely compete with it online. Retail purchases in bitcoin are pure fantasy, IMHO.
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N12
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April 01, 2012, 11:06:28 AM |
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This is not their fault, this is our fault.
Clearly there are not enough people who pay with Bitcoin to make it profitable for the restaurant to accept the currency. Too much hassle for close to zero benefit.
I agree. Regular merchants aren’t the way to go anyway, Bitcoin doesn’t offer much to them without a strong network effect. There are people who benefit from or applications that CANNOT work without Bitcoin, we should look out for those. Agree with BubbleBoy too. It’s wasted energy. |
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blablahblah
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April 01, 2012, 11:24:25 AM |
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In that case I think there's a niche for a Bitcoin specific credit card. The service would allow you to borrow dollars for an extremely short-term loan, which is immediately paid off with Bitcoin transactions. The CC company gives you the market exchange rate between Bitcoin and dollars (or your local currency), and keeps a small percentage for themselves. Of course it wrecks the decentralisation ideology that many people hold dear, but any non-monopoly has to demonstrate trustworthiness in order to gain support.
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blablahblah
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April 01, 2012, 11:32:54 AM |
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In that case I think there's a niche for a Bitcoin specific credit card. The service would allow you to borrow dollars for an extremely short-term loan, which is immediately paid off with Bitcoin transactions. The CC company gives you the market exchange rate between Bitcoin and dollars (or your local currency), and keeps a small percentage for themselves. Of course it wrecks the decentralisation ideology that many people hold dear, but any non-monopoly has to demonstrate trustworthiness in order to gain support.
On second thought, there are probably some very good reasons why the number of "competing" CC companies in the world seems to be so small. At a guess, they've probably got incompatible communication systems and/or software requirements in the point-of-sale readers... Not such a simple problem to solve after all. |
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cunicula
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April 01, 2012, 12:38:33 PM |
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Too much hassle for close to zero benefit.
Fixed that for you. The merchant saves on Visa/Mastercard + banking fees when using bitcoin. Please stop spreading FUD. Oh, I hadn't thought of that. Go tell all the restaurants you know about the wonderful savings they can enjoy if they accept "bitcoin" instead of regular payments... |
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cunicula
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April 01, 2012, 12:41:08 PM |
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As much as I dislike being cunicula's sockpuppet, bitcoin retail purchases are dead in the water.
You'd make a respectable sockpuppet. We have to get you a new icon, though. Make sure that it pisses off libertarians please. Report back when you've found something. |
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Phinnaeus Gage
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Bitcoin: An Idea Worth Spending
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April 01, 2012, 12:54:24 PM |
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This is thread is getting sad and is putting me in a quagmire. I'm about to embark on the Chicagoland area to get several restaurants, mainly, to accept Bitcoin. Three restaurants are co-owned by what's becoming friends of mine, coupled with supplying them barn wood for past and future restaurants, when they expand, notwithstanding. (damn, I hope that sentence is written correctly)Now, it doesn't worry me to get egg on my face by friends. I like eggs. It doesn't bother me to exert time into an endeavor that may be for not. I've done it before and hopefully do it several more times before I pass. I'll continue to press forward with this, for I believe that Bitcoin is too vital to fail. Meze Grill was a fine example to use as I, as well as all others, approach potential brick-and-mortars with the pitch. Yet, I can clearly see that a couple three dozen bitcoiners can't justify a handful of restaurant owners into accepting Bitcoin, especially in a large city like Chicago. Regular merchants aren’t the way to go anyway, Bitcoin doesn’t offer much to them without a strong network effect. Perhaps, we're missing something. An extra oomph for B&M's that would make Bitcoin tower above all else that's currently available. What that oomph is, at the moment I'ven't a clue. But with all the bright minds here, I'm confident that oomph will manifest itself. I'm going to have more to say on this important issue, but I'll end this post with only the thoughts above. ~Bruno~ |
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