A London pub now accepts payment in Bitcoin | Hacker News Reader

A London pub now accepts payment in Bitcoin

individualpubs.co.uk

105 pointsCiaranR53 comments

The pub is in Hackney - http://www.individualpubs.co.uk/pembury/

I haven't tried it yet but keen to head up there, there is a meetup of the London Bitcoin Group on there this Sunday - http://www.meetup.com/London-bitcoin-meetup/events/122553592...

The Pembury is very well known in the geek/dev/startup/board gaming community, most of the people who drink there are geeks of one variety or another.

Looks like an excellent beer selection as well.

And a "lesser spotted" bar billiards table: http://horshambarbilliards.co.uk/Quickstart/ImageLib/best.jp...

To say I'm tempted to pay a visit to this pub would be an understatement.

Also in Cambridge at the Haymakers:

http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Business/Business-News/Use-v...

With only an 8% surcharge!

What was that about low/no processing fees?

That's the currency exchange rate he is offering not a transaction fee. The bitcoin transaction itself is free

Except if you actually read the linked page it says that it's at least partially due to the 7% fees have to deal with when converting the BTC back to sterling, which is all they're really interested in.

Add on whatever fees you pay to get hold of the BTC in the first place and you have quite an expensive system.

of course, there really is no need to pay fees to exchange BTC for GBP. Posting a sell ad on bitcointalk.org is likely to net you someone who will take them off you for between 2 and 5% above mtgox daily average.

Ah, so an unofficial/casual exchange method, with higher risk. Awesome.

A lot of Bitcoin holders bought/mined them at much lower prices than current $100. Compare this 7% premium when buying things to a potential 20-30% capital gains tax you'd have give up when cashing out via exchange.

BTW, you probably still owe capital gains tax when you buy something with Bitcoin.

In the US, "probably" is probably an understatement.

"'Probably' is probably an understatement" is probably an understatement.

Oh dear, I think I've broken it.

I guess so. But for those who want to avoid paying it, buying things daily is less risky than going through the bank. Just like with earnings in cash that you spend in brick and mortar stores.

in the UK if your gain in any tax year is less than £10,600 you do not need to inform HMRC, so any gain made by purchasing beer is unlikely to be of concern to them.

De Waag in Delft, The Netherlands also accepts Bitcoin: http://www.de-waag.nl/Stadscafe/Bitcoin (Dutch)

It's great to see people experimenting with Bitcoin. I'd love to see it develop further as a currency.

Isn't one idea behind Bitcoin anonymity? Then I would blow my identity when I pay in a pub right?

Bitcoin is the opposite of anonymous, every transaction is available in the public ledger.

You can build anonymity on top of it by using throw away accounts, but it's not an inherent part of the system.

Exactly, paying with a credit card is more anonymous than paying with Bitcoin. With the former, only the CC company, the merchant, and presumably the government can see what you purchased. With Bitcoin, anyone with a blockchain explorer can see your when and how much you transacted.

That's a bit inaccurate, your identify isn't attached toe the Bitcoin public ledger. It also has to be inferred through 3rd parties such as your wallet or some BTC exchange.

? You're confusing security with anonymity. The bitcoin mining strategy ensures that transactions are secure, untampered (ID theft? counterfeit bills? credit hijacking?), thus securing anonymity if it is developed (throw away accounts, as said above) when and where needed.

The problem with classical currency is that anyone can spoof anyone else and the system inherently cannot prevent this. Fraud correction is a painstaking manual/organic process involving customer service, account IDs, and headache.

While bitcoin can be anonymous (buy with cash, use a mixing service, change your bitcoin address every time, only pay over tor/i2p), they aren't made for that. Also keep in mind that every transaction is public, even if it can't be traced back to you.

See https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Anonymity for more informations

Not only is every transaction public, but the record of that transaction will stay around forever. Or, at least as long as Bitcoin exists, that is.

It's a pity that they're still pricing the drink against a fiat currency (in this case, Sterling).

I look forward to a day when I'll be able to pay a consistent 0.05/0.1 BTC for a pint.

> I look forward to a day when I'll be able to pay a consistent 0.05/0.1 BTC for a pint.

The value of a bitcoin will have to become less volatile before that day comes. Compare:

http://blockchain.info/charts/market-price

With:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Dollar_Index.png

Yes, the value of the dollar also fluctuates, but over 30 years it has ranged only around 30%. Whereas bitcoin has ranged 4000% in a single year. Not sure any pub would want to accept that volatility, nor would any patron.

i am sure if you knew its value would rise by 4000% you would happily accept them, patron perhaps may not want to spend them though.

They can't price on BTC until Bitcoins have more utility. At the moment the only utility Bitcoins have for the pub owners is to convert into cash so they have to peg them on sterling.

All their costs are still in Sterling. It takes a long time to complete the circle and break dependence on a particular currency.

In short, they'll price beer in BTC as soon as their suppliers price their beer in BTC.

If (as has happened several times before) bitcoin doubled in value against GBP, would you be happy to continue paying the equivalent of double for a pint?

Not too bad, but in my neighbourhood there are several that accept BitCoin:

http://bitcoinhood.wordpress.com/

Here is the sticker to look for: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bergie/9065253249/

I can confirm from first hand experience that, regardless of the quality of the Bitcoin transaction experience, the quality of the beer here is absolutely top notch. Also the food is very good and they have a pretty decent selection of board games behind the bar. Highly recommended if you can endure the trek out to Hackney - if you're interested in checking the pub out, you won't be disappointed.

Also, some places accept Canadian Tire Money! At par!

lol Oh Canadian Tire money.

It's interesting to hear about offline merchants accepting bitcoins. I wonder how much of it has to do with the fixed card processing fees as a component of the small transaction size.

The goal would seem to be when the restaurant can pay their bills in bitcoins, so they never have to convert it to a fiat currency at all.

I also wonder how much of it is novelty/PR. This move gets a lot more people talking about them, and you'll get some people who just want to spend bitcoins in meatspace.

Not only will accepting Bitcoin help this pub save some money on fees, it is very likely attract some new customers who happen to be Bitcoin enthusiasts. Win-win!

Not only do you get dinged when you exchange Bitcoins peer to peer, but you get hit again when you go to cash out through a broker.

It's an interesting experiment, but don't think there aren't any fees. The nominal amount a credit card company collects is lower.

Did you read the bit about 7% fees, so they charge around an 8% premium?

I don't deny they'll get some new trade, but it's not really saving anyone anything.

i think this is the moment when we can say that bitcoin became a real currency. [imo a currency is something what you can use to buy beer]

IT's a chain of 4 pubs in 4 cities, as is apparent if you oh so cunningly go to the root URL

The fact that this is news sheds light on how obscure Bitcoin is as currency.

Writing up the accounting and distributing tax for that must be a bugger.

I think bitcoins just count as assets

They probably get taxed as income at the point they're converted into Sterling. (I'm not an accountant or lawyer.)

Does anyone think Bitcoin might gain greater adoption if more accountants and lawyers knew how to advise their clients?

Are BTC different from accepting any other non-cash asset as payment? It's not really a foreign concept, just a new example of it.

Jesus that's so simple... But I think I'll stick with cash.

Strange that such a budget website would accept bitcoins.

It's not "budget", it's a computer scientist's idea of minimal markup. Like the first google search page. See story here: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-06/17/london-bitcoi...

How long do you have to wait for confirmation/

When I've made bitcoin payments, confirmations have usually reached a sufficient threshold in 30 seconds or less. That doesn't mean that your transaction has made it into the blockchain, only that enough servers have validated that your transaction is good based on their state and that they will hold your transaction until it is in the blockchain.

Prepare to be extradited!

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