Do we dare talk about tipping in Canada? How does it differ from the US these days?
Anyone willing to disclose their policy?
15% seems to be the comfortable rate for Canadians I've talked to, and I've talked to quite a few and just listened. American friends (generally affluent) and affluent Canadians default to 20%. A lot of immigrants still not tipping at all. Machines here commonly programmed to default to 18% which doesn't seem to make anyone happy, you have to spend extra time correcting it or save time and just accept it.
Buying at the counter? Pizza slice, coffee, growler fill, cannabis -- the social feedback seems to be if they do some work they deserve a tip, otherwise none. Industry folks note they usually make sub-par incomes, so should be tipped.
Delivery? The service fees that insinuate go to the delivery, driver, and staff can often just go to the tech service provider (Uber Eats etc).
What about Uber/Lyft/Taxis?
Story time:
I got off a plane into a monsoon in El Salvador, the legalization of bitcoin was going to happen the next day, so I needed to find a taxi to Bitcoin Beach (El Zonte). I didn't expect it, but it turns out Uber works there as well -- after a notable micro-geo-targeting issue in the dark in a monsoon finding each other, I found my Uber driver. He didn't speak English, but as I knew bitcoin would be legal there the next day I asked him if I could pay or tip in bitcoin. He didn't speak English, so after several failed attempts he called his son, who spoke some English. I said I would be happy to pay in bitcoin, or tip in bitcoin. The son was so-called orange pilled and clearly excited, telling his father to accept the bitcoin, but the pragmatic father asked how to convert to USD and the story wasn't simple. Writing this over a year later, the Chiva wallet is still not a success, which Salvadoreans were generously open to -- I digress.
The son had a familiarity with bitcoin, but thought payments would take too long and I could lie and not make sure the payment hit finality, so I explained the lightning network the best I could, with a bit of bravado as at the time I was CEO of CoinOS.io, the oldest bitcoin company in the world and the fastest and easiest at payments. I asked the son to create an account on coinos and tell me his username. For example, I'm kris on coinos, so my addresses are coinos.io/kris for bitcoin on-chain, liquid.net, or lightning payments. I'm no longer involved with them, but it's the best payment solution on the planet.
Tocador:
Last week-end I was at my local favourite restaurant in Vancouver, Tocador, and as I always do out of habit now, I ask when getting a bill if they accept bitcoin. She laughed and said she wished, she'd heard about bitcoin for a long time and from her boyfriend, but didn't have any. I said, "If you've got your cell phone and a data connection, I'll tip you in bitcoin and it'll take you less than 30 seconds". She excused herself to go get her phone and came back excited.
There's a lot we wanna say when we've been in bitcoin, like explaining custodial vs non-custodial, and this is where coinos wins every time. I asked her to create an account, make it an easy to remember username, think early days ICQ or Twitter if you're that old, but to make a password you will not forget and that you've not used before, or you will lose it all.
Passwords:
I teach classes on password management regularly, so I want to say a lot here, but imagine your password is compromised and it's angel69@facebook, I can reasonably assume your password on gmail is angel69@gmail, so think about a way to make clever passwords unique on each website.
If you run out of memory, use keepass.info for everything
Back to Tocador:
She created an account, I sent her sats in the typical one click familiar with coinos, faster than traditional payment rails, and she was grateful and excited. I went to the bathroom later and I think she was telling the staff about it and how to split it up (easy, create a coinos account and send over the the sats).
It takes some privilege to accept bitcoin today, as it's not easy to convert in many locations. It's worth holding for four years I suggested, anyone that holds bitcoin for 4 years is generally happen with the return on investment, daily spikes be damned.
Back to my story:
I sent some sats to my Uber driver's son knowing I may never see them again, as I was a foreigner in a strange country sending sats to a guy on a phone. The old man still wanted cold hard cash that he was used to, I obliged. I also paid for my trip in sats. Bitcoin is a long game, and in 4 years I want my impact to be notable. It'll be interesting in 2 years to see where those sats are. I sent the tip via sats to the son.
TIPS: