Floor’s Cafe, Berlin Florentina Martins, Owner

When did you start introducing Bitcoin to the cafe?
Just a week after the cafe opened. I first came into contact with it while working at a bar called Room77. There’s quite a big Bitcoin scene here, so although I was sceptical at first I quickly came round to it, when I opened Floor’s it seemed natural to acceptBitcoin payments as well.

For me it’s an interesting way of not paying in cash and without involving banks. Normally if I would take card payment there’s always a percentage of money given to the banks, with Bitcoin it cuts out the middle man — it’s just from one person to another.

Can you explain how Bitcoin works here?
There’s a QR code at the front, you take a photograph of that and send your bitcoins via your phone. It’s different for Android and iPhones but either way you can transfer the Bitcoins from your phone by scanning the QR code.

Normally if I would take card payment there’s always a percentage of money given to the banks, with Bitcoin it cuts out the middle man— it’s just from one person to another >

What kind of people pay using Bitcoin at Floor’s and how often do people use it?
In the beginning, to be honest, it was used much more, I think that’s because the Bitcoin was more stable than it is now. There was a lot of media attention given to it so then it was used almost on a daily basis, sometimes twice a day. Now it’s more like once a week, once every two weeks. It’s really slowed down. In the beginning there was a very international crowd, people came to this area specifically because there are so many Bitcoin outlets. You can spend a whole day without spending any other currency.

What were your expectations of Bitcoin when you first introduced it?
I’m selling coffee, so we’re not talking about big amounts of money. I just really wanted to try it out. I haven’t really done anything with the Bitcoins I’ve earned here other than may be going for a burger at Room77. It’s kind of stayed here in the area.

Expectations? I think the people in this area are very enthusiastic that it’s come back, anticipating that it’s going to be worth much more in the coming years.

What do you think is the future of Bitcoin?
On one hand I think a lot more people will start using it.Especially with the risk of recessions looming and entire countries already going bankrupt, people are losing their trust in banks. But I’m not sure that Bitcoin is going to be the final answer, maybe this is like how MSN Messenger came before Facebook. This is the first idea, perhaps something else will takeover.

BitcoinCentre, NYC Nick Spanos, Founder

What happens at the BitcoinCentre?
We hold a variety of events dedicated to promoting Bitcoin,educating the public, and hosting the local Bitcoin community.One featured (American documentary filmmaker) Morgan Spurlock speaking to 500 people.

Why did you found the BitcoinCentre?
The learning curve is very difficult for people to understand what this is so we created the centre to educate and inform.

Why are you so passionate about this technology?
I’m more passionate about the Blockchain that lies behindBitcoin. Blockchain is the most important invention of the21st century because for the first time truth can be part of the equation. It’s a peer-to-peer consensus based ledger,with consensus you can all agree on the time stamp which we’ve never been able to do before.

What were your expectations with Bitcoin?
I’m the only guy with an eye in the world of the Bitcoin blind.I only need to listen to hear all the commentary of people not understanding it.

Bitcoin is the only Blockchain that has consensus right now.
It’s the only Blockchain where participation is rewarded, it’s rewarded in Bitcoin. People look at it as a currency because that’s all their brain can give them. They think it’s a currency,they think it’s this or that but it’s nothing like that. It’s a reward system, like air miles, for plugging your machine in and becoming part of this consensus network.

So you don’t see Bitcoin as a threat to traditional forms of currency?
No. And whoever does, like the financial regulators, they’re going to learn something about the Blockchain.

What do you think the future for all of this is?
This is the only future we’re ever going to have. The systems in which we work are going to become honest because if it’s a market driven economy people will use financial instruments that are provable and that no one has to pay for.

The Pembury Tavern, London Steven Early, Director of Individual Pubs Ltd

When did you introduce Bitcoin in your pub and why?
We introduced it in June 2013. As it stands, card payments are the most popular form of payment at The Pembury Tavern.They’re most convenient for the customer, but as we have to enter the total manually into the card machine there is sometimes a discrepancy when it comes to adding up at the end of the day.With Bitcoin, the total is automatically transferred through theQR code reducing the scope for error, which is largely why we wanted to introduce Bitcoin in the first place.

How many people pay with Bitcoin?
At first, we were taking in around £1000 per month viaBitcoin payments. Now, that’s significantly reduced to about £250 per month.

If RBF is introduced, I will stop accepting Bitcoin in my pubs because it would become trivial to perform a double\-spend attack against me

What do you think the future of Bitcoin is?
That depends whether the developer, user and miner communities can sort out the current capacity problem without fundamentally changing the way it works. As I understand it, there are two main camps at the moment:

First, there’s the “Bitcoin Core” developers. They favour keeping the existing 1MB block size limit, which is currently limiting the capacity of the network to accept transactions. They want thereto be a market for transactions, whereby people who want to make a transaction need to pay a large enough fee to persuade miners to include it in a block.

To enable this market to work they have developed a feature called “Replace By Fee” (RBF), which allows a transaction spending some Bitcoin to be overridden by another one that has a larger fee. They propose that most transactions should take place off-chain, i.e. not actually using the Bitcoin network,using a system they call “Lightning”.

Second, the “Bitcoin Classic” developers. They favour raising the 1MB block size as necessary to support the volume of transactions seen on the network.

If “Core” wins out, and RBF is introduced, I will stop acceptingBitcoin in my pubs because it would become trivial to perform a double-spend attack against me. The “Core” developers would say I could write code to refuse to accept RBF transactions, but we take such small amounts of Bitcoin that it isn’t worth my time to make this change. Also, explaining to customers that they mustn’t send the payment as a RBF transaction would be difficult and would make the user experience much worse.

Do you use Bitcoin yourself? What for?
I don’t really do anything with it other than convert it back to pounds as necessary.