We’ve all heard of regular cafés and cyber cafes. Now, the United States is introducing people to the idea of a cryptocurrency café.
Crypto and Coffee: A Perfect Match?
The first cryptocurrency café is now open for business on Clematis Street in West Palm Beach, Florida. Already, the retailer is proving to be a popular hot spot for what one source describes as “people of all ages” and “all walks of life.” One customer commented that she was “excited” by the prospects of a crypto café, and that she was looking forward to seeing what would happen.
Co-owner Nelson Winter is very excited about the prospects of bringing something completely new to customers. He states that he wants people to say, “Wow. This is cool.”
He says that the café is not so much about being able to purchase pastries and cups of coffee with crypto, although that’s certainly a huge part of it. He’s also very interested in educating customers about the benefits of cryptocurrencies, and he’s confident they’ll be intrigued by what they learn. He estimates that approximately 90 percent of customers will have no knowledge or understanding of bitcoin. He also states:
[We are] helping move towards adoption of cryptocurrency as a more mainstream concept for people in their day-to-day interactions.
One of the main goals of cryptocurrencies up to this point is to be used and spent like traditional money. Unfortunately, this has been rather difficult considering digital currency’s vulnerability to outside market influence and price swings. So long as cryptocurrency remains volatile – as bitcoin was between 2017 and 2018 – retailers will probably think twice about accepting it as a valid form of payment.
Let’s say you use cryptocurrency to purchase $60 worth of merchandise. Tomorrow, that crypto could go down in price, meaning you still got your items, but the company that accepted it did not receive the full extent of its profit. This isn’t always fair to retailers, which means very few stores have decided to accept it.
The café also takes cash and regular credit cards, for people who are wary of using crypto or aren’t entirely aware of how to pay with it.
Computers and Crypto Brought Together Over Warm Brews
In addition, the café is built to look like the inside of a computer. Several 1s and 0s float around through the café because, as Winter mentions, they are the part of the language of computers. He states:
The ones and zeroes that are floating around is like being inside a computer, because ones and zeroes are the language of computers… We see our customers as anyone who wants a fantastic cup of coffee. Bitcoin itself lays in the middle between finance and technology, and it is the marriage of those two universes. So, what we want to do is attract either side of that equation.