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Topic: Announcing the Bitcoin Kiez rollout - page 3. (Read 20350 times)

donator
Activity: 674
Merit: 522
April 28, 2013, 05:15:03 AM
#48
Hey!

@Berliners : )

I intend to visit Kreuzberg, is there any hostel or hotel or something that accepts Bitcoin?

Thanks!
hero member
Activity: 492
Merit: 500
November 19, 2012, 06:33:37 AM
#47
Here's some more picture from Bitcoin Friday @ Bitcoin-Kiez in Berlin: http://imgur.com/a/6fzE3
legendary
Activity: 1708
Merit: 1019
November 17, 2012, 11:25:30 AM
#46
so you can only link a customer to a payment via the paid amount?

Yes.

Only the EUR value of the purchase goes into the books.

Alternatively one can book the BTC onto one account and declare the value of that ballance according to the exchange rate at the time of the tax declaration. This makes more sense when one starts to also pay for business expenses in BTC.

We will upgrade the wallets of the bars / restaurants with nfc chips so the waiters can just walk up to a table, tell the amount to be paid, transmit the address and once they walked back behind the bar they can already check if the payment is on the way. Unconfirmed transaction on the blockchain is enough.

Works fine.

Joe



Maybe it would make sense to automatically save the used conversion rate when receiving a Bitcoin payment? The schildbach client obviously knows the rate, so it could write it into a simple text file too.
I just imagined the horror when a tax guy sees your bitcoins in your tax declaration, and wants to know every single conversion rate for every of those 749 Bitcoin payments.. It probably wouldn't even be possible to find out the "24h mean exchange rate" from a month ago?

Ente

from how I understood they are booking via their normal system anyway and will handle all taxes there (receive bitcoin is like receive fiat cash).

Though I am sure this system works just fine and makes paying with bitcoin possible at almost no cost and effort:

What would be even nicer was to be able to do an integrated bitcoin order/buy. Maybe for the most often ordered items like beer, water, coke you could just put a print with a couple of (design) qr codes on each table such that the system knows what to bring to what table right after ordering/paying via the blockchain.

The question is how to smoothly insert this knowledge into the regular workflow? A little printer?

You could also put a qr code for tips and one to broadcast that the current order for the table is finished by sending a satoshi.



hero member
Activity: 492
Merit: 500
November 17, 2012, 10:55:46 AM
#45
This week, tour guide Heidi Leyton started to accept Bitcoin.

Heidi offers a wide variety of ways to explore Berlin. Whether it's a tour to the remains of the wall, an insight to the Jewish Berlin or a walk through Kreuzberg, where the Bitcoin Kiez is located: Heidi will make it interesting and worthwile. Cheesy

More info on her website, http://heidileyton.com

If you want to make arrangements for YOUR tour, you can contact Heidi through her website, http://heidileyton.com/?page_id=21 or reach her via [email protected]

sr. member
Activity: 257
Merit: 250
Not trusting third parties with my private keys
November 16, 2012, 04:18:42 PM
#44
The map of Real World Shops is filling in nicely in America and Europe.  Great job guys.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Real_world_shops

Unfortunately it's also being spammed by non-real-world shops aka every shop is a real world shop. Guess somebody will have to play wiki-nazi at some point. For now I will suggest some rules.

I don't see much of that happening except for a couple in south america where there are only four listings anyway.  If a marker for an internet shop is actually blocking a marker for a real world shop, then remove it.
legendary
Activity: 1862
Merit: 1105
WalletScrutiny.com
November 16, 2012, 12:56:56 PM
#43
The map of Real World Shops is filling in nicely in America and Europe.  Great job guys.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Real_world_shops

Unfortunately it's also being spammed by non-real-world shops aka every shop is a real world shop. Guess somebody will have to play wiki-nazi at some point. For now I will suggest some rules.
sr. member
Activity: 257
Merit: 250
Not trusting third parties with my private keys
November 16, 2012, 12:06:48 PM
#42
The map of Real World Shops is filling in nicely in America and Europe.  Great job guys.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Real_world_shops
legendary
Activity: 1862
Merit: 1105
WalletScrutiny.com
November 15, 2012, 02:46:52 PM
#41
The new merchants all installed the Satoshi client on their laptops.

Make sure the clients are configured for outgoing communications only ( -nolisten ).  This is because knowing the IP address of the node, it becomes not terribly hard to perform a race attack to double spend.  And the way the Bitcioin.org client functions, the merchant might not even notice ... the transaction would just disappear as if it had never been made.

It might even be seen as a challenge by someone to be the first to pull off a race attack double spend against a bricks and mortar merchant.  If configured with -nolisten (and optionally, an outgoing connection made explicitly to a well-connected node), then the chance of a race attack succeeding is much much lower, to where the profit on the sale is likely orders of magnitude greater than any losses due to a race attack double spend.

Gnah, race attacks. I don't want to say they are not an issue at all but in this case I would say: "Please don't spread fud."

If people do this in a burgers place, they are known to the waiter and highly risk to get caught. If it actually happens in the wild, this will be good for the burger place, too as it's news and news is worth more than a burger's worth lost.
hero member
Activity: 743
Merit: 500
November 15, 2012, 10:02:06 AM
#40
here is a nice solution to:
http://acceptbit.com/
legendary
Activity: 2126
Merit: 1001
November 15, 2012, 08:50:34 AM
#39
Wonderful!

Joe, I tried to visit Room77 when I was last in Berlin a couple of weeks ago, but unfortunately it was closed (this was around 2pm). I would have gone later but some of my friends are vegetarian. It'd be nice if there was a website or some other place where we can see what's on the menu.

Good luck!

Room77 opens at 3pm normally.
Also: I eat the cheese nachos for more than a year now - every fkn time! :-)
No, people have no clue what awesomeness they will receive if they haven't been in the Room before!

Let us know when you are around next time, there'll be some of us around!

Ente
hero member
Activity: 492
Merit: 500
legendary
Activity: 1526
Merit: 1129
November 15, 2012, 06:46:19 AM
#37
Wonderful!

Joe, I tried to visit Room77 when I was last in Berlin a couple of weeks ago, but unfortunately it was closed (this was around 2pm). I would have gone later but some of my friends are vegetarian. It'd be nice if there was a website or some other place where we can see what's on the menu.

Satoshi client is (for now) a good choice for them, as long as they keep it running all the time. I hope that soon you can migrate them to something lighter-weight, like a new 0.8 release of the Satoshi client or MultiBit. Otherwise they may find that they cannot keep up and want to stop running the software.

Good luck!
legendary
Activity: 2506
Merit: 1010
November 15, 2012, 05:29:14 AM
#36
The merchants will use blockchain.info to check their balances and not always wait for their client to update, so this shouldn't be an issue. Or am I missing something?

That's probably works as well as any other approach.    Some people might recommend avoiding a third-party source for blockchain and transaction data, but for amounts in the burgers and beers range, I would trust Blockchain.info's data for that.

legendary
Activity: 2058
Merit: 1005
this space intentionally left blank
November 15, 2012, 05:22:22 AM
#35
another option:

convert the btc to eur once a day / week / month via mtgox.
generate a report for each month:

xxxx BTC
converted to
YYYY €

and put that on your tax report, provable by bank account statement (mtgox sepa wire)
legendary
Activity: 2126
Merit: 1001
November 15, 2012, 05:04:42 AM
#34
so you can only link a customer to a payment via the paid amount?

Yes.

Only the EUR value of the purchase goes into the books.

Alternatively one can book the BTC onto one account and declare the value of that ballance according to the exchange rate at the time of the tax declaration. This makes more sense when one starts to also pay for business expenses in BTC.

We will upgrade the wallets of the bars / restaurants with nfc chips so the waiters can just walk up to a table, tell the amount to be paid, transmit the address and once they walked back behind the bar they can already check if the payment is on the way. Unconfirmed transaction on the blockchain is enough.

Works fine.

Joe



Maybe it would make sense to automatically save the used conversion rate when receiving a Bitcoin payment? The schildbach client obviously knows the rate, so it could write it into a simple text file too.
I just imagined the horror when a tax guy sees your bitcoins in your tax declaration, and wants to know every single conversion rate for every of those 749 Bitcoin payments.. It probably wouldn't even be possible to find out the "24h mean exchange rate" from a month ago?

Ente
hero member
Activity: 492
Merit: 500
November 15, 2012, 04:58:09 AM
#33
The new merchants all installed the Satoshi client on their laptops.

Make sure the clients are configured for outgoing communications only ( -nolisten ).  This is because knowing the IP address of the node, it becomes not terribly hard to perform a race attack to double spend.  And the way the Bitcioin.org client functions, the merchant might not even notice ... the transaction would just disappear as if it had never been made.

It might even be seen as a challenge by someone to be the first to pull off a race attack double spend against a bricks and mortar merchant.  If configured with -nolisten (and optionally, an outgoing connection made explicitly to a well-connected node), then the chance of a race attack succeeding is much much lower, to where the profit on the sale is likely orders of magnitude greater than any losses due to a race attack double spend.


The merchants will use blockchain.info to check their balances and not always wait for their client to update, so this shouldn't be an issue. Or am I missing something?
legendary
Activity: 2058
Merit: 1005
this space intentionally left blank
November 15, 2012, 04:50:45 AM
#32
you know what would be awesome:


a smallish device that can be used to tally totals and print out a human readable total plus a BTC QR code.
the receiving end should be a paper wallet, the waiter could have a tablet with blockchain.info app and the paper wallet added as a "to watch" adress, incoming trx will show up within seconds.

legendary
Activity: 1708
Merit: 1019
November 15, 2012, 04:36:55 AM
#31
This is awesome. Next time I get to Berlin I will make sure to buy something.

Now we need the same in Munich.

Could you explain how it is done?

How it is done:
Joe runs the ROOM77, and accepts Bitcoin for two years now. So he knows his stuff. He is in touch with his fellow shops, bars, restaurants and neighbors. Being enthusiastic about Bitcoin, it was inevitable to turn them to Bitcoin - one after one! :-)

Yes, I think this is the way - Talk to the people. This is much better "advertising" than large billboard ads!

Yes, exiting stuff happens here, Berlin Bitcoin Kiez.
..and this is just the beginning!

Ente

Smiley  I meant how does the system work. Just a smartphone or is there more to it?



The new merchants all installed the Satoshi client on their laptops. We simply printed one of their public keys to a plain sheet of paper, including a QR-code and and btc.to-link to that address, which was put up on the wall.

Customers can now copy that address and send the required amount in BTC. We assume that most customers will use the Schildbach/blockchain.info client for Android or easywallet for iPhone to pay. Both offer automated currency conversion, so you can simply type in the required amount in EUR.

The merchant can check if the payment got in by opening up blockchain.info with his public address (which we bookmarked on their laptops).

Not sure if that's the most convenient option, but it seems to work. We'll most likely smoothen out the process soon, but need some feedback from the merchants or their customers first. We also had a discussion what client we should use for the merchants, and we decided to stick to the Satoshi client for the time being, combined with the additional features provided by blockchain.info.


simple is good. You might consider using Multibit, though, as it is much faster and more lightweight.

[...]
We will upgrade the wallets of the bars / restaurants with nfc chips so the waiters can just walk up to a table, tell the amount to be paid, transmit the address and once they walked back behind the bar they can already check if the payment is on the way. Unconfirmed transaction on the blockchain is enough.
[...]

why not stick to qr codes for now?


@2weix: It's been so long I wrote any BASIC that today I only understand Python.
legendary
Activity: 2506
Merit: 1010
November 15, 2012, 04:00:10 AM
#30
The new merchants all installed the Satoshi client on their laptops.

Make sure the clients are configured for outgoing communications only ( -nolisten ).  This is because knowing the IP address of the node, it becomes not terribly hard to perform a race attack to double spend.  And the way the Bitcioin.org client functions, the merchant might not even notice ... the transaction would just disappear as if it had never been made.

It might even be seen as a challenge by someone to be the first to pull off a race attack double spend against a bricks and mortar merchant.  If configured with -nolisten (and optionally, an outgoing connection made explicitly to a well-connected node), then the chance of a race attack succeeding is much much lower, to where the profit on the sale is likely orders of magnitude greater than any losses due to a race attack double spend.
sr. member
Activity: 359
Merit: 250
November 15, 2012, 12:13:09 AM
#29
so you can only link a customer to a payment via the paid amount?

Yes.

Only the EUR value of the purchase goes into the books.

Alternatively one can book the BTC onto one account and declare the value of that ballance according to the exchange rate at the time of the tax declaration. This makes more sense when one starts to also pay for business expenses in BTC.

We will upgrade the wallets of the bars / restaurants with nfc chips so the waiters can just walk up to a table, tell the amount to be paid, transmit the address and once they walked back behind the bar they can already check if the payment is on the way. Unconfirmed transaction on the blockchain is enough.

Works fine.

Joe

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