Previously I argued that until you spend it, bitcoin isn't money. This is the follow-up: a plain field report on how our Santa Cruz meetup actually buys its pizza in bitcoin and few lessons I learned along the way in case you wanna do something similar.
https://bitcoinpolis.substack.com/p/how-our-meetup-buys-pizza
Would love to hear from people trying to do similar things or any feedback.
You have a couple of insights I'm here are absolute gold.
The community wallet is a really fun idea, and making it something that the whole community works on as a way to spend Bitcoin is excellent. I'm going to try to implement this.
This is so cool. It's easy to lose track of wins like this when the mindset is "find someone to sponsor it" or "just pay for it myself."
I suspect the energizing value of doing it the way you describe will bear a lot of fruit in the future.
I know that I have made the boil the oceans mistake by trying to go whole hog when perhaps a much smaller ask was the better way to go. Something to think about here.
Well played, sir!
Thank you!
Hell yeah. What kind of pizza do you get, and from where?
Pleasure Pizza downtown Santa Cruz
We order a mix based on people’s preferences. I’m sure we could vibe code an app for decentralized pizza selection but we are not there yet:-)
Great ideas! Thank for sharing this.
Where about is this meet up group?
Santa Cruz, California
This is a pain point felt in many bars/restaurants. It's even a pain point at the BJJ Gym in Austin 10th Planet - they love bitcoin so they accept it but it's a hassle because it's not integrated with Toast.
at the BJJ Gym in Austin 10th Planet - they love bitcoin so they accept it
ok so i'm moving to austin, sweet
I go there and half the guys are bitcoiners. But they're gym rats they never go to meetups so it's almost entirely orthogonal to the nerd/tech/startup community.
Yeah, Austin is pretty good place for Bitcoiners. I visited a couple of years ago and it was super vibrant community, including stackers.news!
Yep. There is an issue on Toast forum to implement Bitcoin but I doubt it has much priority.
I think there are companies trying to force the issue. Orange Standard has a partnership with 10P pretty prestigious gym and they are actively working on it. I don't know much about those guys but I'm hoping they have the finesse and determination to pull it off.
I think merchants switching to Square terminals is the best way to get Toast prioritize:-)
Possibly. But it seems like Toast does more than just POS. They do a lot with inventory and I grew in respect for the way they really went holistic with their approach to simplifying ops for restaurants.
I spoke specifically to a bar/restaurant owned by someone in our Austin Bitcoin community and he expressed they can't live without Toast. I don't think it's as simple as "just switch" for most people and Toast seems like a pretty tech forward startup so the difficulty of getting integration isn't as high as you might think. Check out this interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfoToc5PfyA
I see. Yeah, I've heard that Toast is pretty good for restaurant/bars. Well, hopefully they integrate Lightning/Cashu soon.
Speaking of Austin, without any statistical rigor, I feel that I am much more likely to encounter a Toast POS than Square. So much so that I really have to go out of my way to find places to spend Bitcoin.
We should start a list of places. I have a few that are within walking distance that I like a lot. There would be even more of Toast had an integration.
Any Pizza in Bitcoin is a one to enjoy
This is the kind of adoption story I find more useful than another “merchant accepts Bitcoin” headline.
Generating a Lightning invoice is the easy part. Making it fit the POS, staff workflow and accounting without adding another device seems to be the real problem.
When Bitcoin becomes just another payment option inside the tools merchants already use, things get much easier.
Thanks!
The surprising part to me is how it was kinda hard to overcome these little steps but once it’s done once now everyone does it without any questions. So I’m hoping this little success will inspire other people to try something similar.