A bar in Beijing has become the first in China to accept payments in Bitcoin. Silk Road dealers, anarcho-libertarians, fiat-currency-phobics and any lucky bastards who forgot they had 4.1 million yuan of the digital currency lying around should head down to Cafe&Bar 2nd Place in Wudaokou.
Speaking to Bitcoin site Coin Desk, the bar's Japanese proprietor Rin says: "I did it to attract new customers and also for my own self study."
Bitcoin enthusiasts have reportedly been holding regular meetups at the bar for some time. One of them, American Jake Smith, persuaded Rin to begin accepting the volatile currency as a payment option.
Smith works full-time for BitFund.pe, a Bitcoin-dominated private equity fund. He also acts as something of a middle-man for people buying drinks at 2nd Place (because this wouldn't be a Bitcoin story if there wasn't some needlessly complicated element to it):
Rin is still not a bitcoin user himself; we made an arrangement that he keeps track of the RMB value of the drinks paid for in bitcoin, and then I settle the bill with him and receive the BTC he’s collected. But he checks out the BTC price every day now, and it’s my hope that sooner rather than later, one day he’ll tell me he doesn’t want to sell me the BTC and just hold onto it instead.
Rin's adoption of Bitcoin as a payment method comes just as Bitcoin exchange Mt Gox, based in Japan, was pushed off the global top spot by BTC China. The China-based exchange now handles over 33 percent of all trades in the digital currency, though traders must have a bank account in China to use the service.
[Image via Flickr]
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