Bitcoins do have buying power
While major North American retailers don’t accept payment in bitcoin yet, a network of mostly independently owned brick-andmortar businesses do.
A $5-foot-long Subway sandwich purchased mid-week in Allentown, Pa. would cost you 0.0051 BTC, while a martini at New York City’s EVR bar would cost 0.0153 BTC.
The most expensive pizza available at Folino’s Wood Fired Pizza in Shelburne, Vt. would set you back 0.0204 BTC.
Bitcoin is big in New Hampshire, where thousands of libertarians have flocked in the past decade under the Free State Project — and George Mandrik of Blockchain.info is one of them.
Mandrik is also the owner of a baklava business which, of course, accepts bitcoins. “Bitcoin has really caught on with this community, and many in New Hampshire pay for goods and services using bitcoin,” he says.
It can actually be more advantageous for small businesses to accept bitcoin — even if the currency’s value is presently unstable — because it means the owners can curb the hefty transaction fees brought on by debit and credit cards, as well as completely eliminate chargebacks that so often happen with credit cards.
However, says Montrealbased cryptographer Jeremy Clark, bitcoin transactions can take about an hour to be fully authorized by the decentralized network.
That doesn’t mean you have to languish on the other side of the Subway counter; it means the merchant is taking your word that you won’t purposely doublespend your bitcoin in the interim.