Would you accept Bitcoin for your food truck?
Bitcoin… You may have seen it reported in the news or heard relatives discussing it at the holiday dinner table. In the second half of 2017 to the beginning of 2018, the topic seems almost inescapable if you pay any attention to financial news reports.
Some experts believe cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are the future of money and a more efficient way to store value than in banks. Others like investing legend Warren Buffet, believe these new forms of money will “certainly end badly” and this is nothing more than a hyped-up bubble that will surely burst.
While it’s not yet clear how things will shake out for this new currency, it’s making plenty of headlines right now. Which led us to wonder… Would you accept Bitcoins or other forms of cryptocurrency on your food truck if you had the opportunity?
What’s the Potential?
Before you get too excited about the potential opportunity, one thing that would need to happen is wider adoption of this new form of money to get consistent sales. This estimate says well under half a precent of the total world population owns even a fractional percentage of a single Bitcoin. There simply isn’t enough people to get consistent transactions from.
Still… There could be some PR advantages to accepting bitcoin. For example, Subways in Bueno’s Aires now accept Bitcoin payments, although it’s unclear how many transactions have actually occured from customers ultilizing the currency. There are some other large companies that have begun to accept the form of payment too like Microsoft and Expedia.com. For the companies that elect to accept Bitcoin, they’ve been able to garner some free press as a result.
Bitcoin and other forms of cryptocurrencies
If you’re not familiar with Bitcoin, an extremely simple explaination it’s a digital currency. You can use these “coins” in the same way that you use a dollar to purchase goods, services (assuming the business accepts them as payment), or even a way to store wealth.
Unlike United States dollars, these Bitcoins are not backed by the United States government. There are no real life dollars or coins that you can hold in your hand either. All transactions are recorded online by a group of computers that documents all transactions on a large digital ledger. The concept of Bitcoin and other digital currencies such as this go much, much deeper, but you can watch this video if you’d like to learn more. Reader beware… You can go very far down this rabbit hole.
Bottom line, it’s unlikely that you’ll be accepting Bitcoin payments anytime soon on your food truck. Still, if you had the opportunity would you accept it as payment? At the time of writing a single Bitcoin is being valued at around $12,000 USD.
