I visited “Bitcoin Jungle” (Uvita, CR) a few days this week.
Normally when I go to circular economy projects (Arnhem, Rovereto, El Zonte…) I link up with the organizer(s) and seek out the locations where I can pay with bitcoin, but this time I decided to run the experiment a bit differently: I just went to wherever I felt like going and then asked if they accepted BTC.
Out of about a dozen places I visited…
1 accepted bitcoin. (S/O to The Fistcuff Pub!)
1 had a Bitcoin Jungle sticker but didn’t actually take bitcoin payments. (Whale Tail Brewery)
1 did not accept bitcoin but seemed genuinely interested and would look into it. (Coffee Bear)
Out of the other ~10, about half just said no, and the other half clearly didn’t even know what bitcoin was.
So is this a bad result? Frankly, it’s roughly what I would have expected. I’ve long believed that spurring bitcoin adoption by convincing merchants is an uphill battle. You might get a few boutique shops and bars to participate, and then they find it’s kind of a pain to teach all their personnel how to use wallets just for maybe a handful of bitcoiners that show up once in a while.
I do like these projects, and if you _do_ seek out the bitcoin accepting spots you can probably go a long way without touching fiat for a few days— yet we also shouldn’t overstate the success or impact of such local initiatives.
I suspect it might just be a bit too early for this still… but if we do want to create hotspots with truly widespread adoption, what would that require?
I’d say:
- Instant fiat conversion is probably a must.
- Printable QR codes (BOLT12/Silent Payments) to make it easier for merchants to keep accepting BTC even if sparsely used.
- Ideally there’d be a source of “fresh” BTC that’s brought into the economy, whether that’s from local miners, or expats that get paid in bitcoin, or Bitcoin tourists, or…
- Ability to pay tax in BTC would be great but probably a long-shot in most places.
- What else?..
