Topic: Will you ever be able to pay for a coffee with Bitcoin? (Read 397 times)

I think the question should look like this:
When buying coffee for bitcoin will become commonplace?
This will require the implementation of such second layer solutions as Lightning network or Rootstock

What do you mean? It already happened multiple times.

Search for "buying coffee bitcoin" on youtube and there will be multiple examples of it. Even buying coffee with the Lightning Network is possible[1]. On the other side, who would accept "electroneum" for a beer?

[1] https://twitter.com/danielalexiuc/status/993667149238435840

personally i think i can pay for a beer with electroneum in liverpool before i can pay a coffee with BTC in london. we have been waiting many years for a payment with btc and nothing happened yet.

I think it is definitely possible to pay for a coffee with bitcoin. I remember there are already some stores, both local stores and online stores accept bitcoin as a payment. There will be more and more such stores in the future. There is a korean restaurant near where I live accept bitcoin and bitcoin cash as payment.

In fact, merchants in many places accept Bitcoin as a means of payment, but such merchants are not spread all over the world! So it is unrealistic to want to buy goods at any time with Bitcoin!

Answering your last question. I would say we probably will see a cafe, using a cryptocurrency as a payment method, but it is not obligatory a btc, but may it be the other crypto. Who knows...

yeah as long as you trust that block explorer to be correct and without bugs.
and if we start talking about possibilities then there are lots of them. for example you should technically be able to use BIP37 or bloom filters to get what you need from the nodes in a decentralized way. or figure out how Electrum nodes communicate and just send a request to one of them asking for your transaction history!

In the next future, you will be able to pay everything, not only a coffee, in Bitcoin.

It will be possible with lightning network.

Even without lightning network, the risk of double spending a $2 transaction for coffee is low. There are online stores that require 0 confirmations for low amount transactions (under $20), even though waiting 10 minutes isnt a problem for online purchases.

As people said, it could also be possible to buy giftcards with bitcoin (e.g. for grocery stores, electronics stores, where waiting 10 minutes could be annoying). Personally I would be happy to buy a giftcard for groceries, electronics, restaurants, etc. with bitcoin.

Look like original discussion (How to purchase coffee using bitcoin) is now moving to different direction. Using Altcoin will never equal to using the bitcoin.
I think we should wait for LN to be fully functional.

Actually buying a coffee with BTC might not be the Satoshi priority. Satoshi was working for a Peer to Peer currency not for Peer to Business currency.
So further enhancement and development needed for BTC to be successful as peer to business currency.

Bitcoin is sort of a wildcard when it comes to in the line payments as if legality is not a problem it will always be up to the business owner if they want to accept Bitcoin as a mode of payment. Altcoins on the other hand have a better chance, some altcoin developers are always partnering up with other companies to make their token unique or provide a better payment system compared to Bitcoin. If they partner up the right restaurant or fast food chain expect that altcoin to be used in that establishment.

Or you could just use the console to sign and broadcast the transaction using the inputs from a block explorer?

you don't need to sync a full node to spend unless you are too far behind and don't have the transaction output that you want to spend.
for example if total blocks are 60000 and you have until 50000 as long as the UTXO you want to spend is from anywhere below 50000 and you have not spent it before you can still make a transaction and broadcast it easily.

It could also be a problem if you wallet is on a full node, and you have to sync it on your laptop before you can pay. If the restaurant has WiFi, allows for internet ordering, and offers table service, then that could work.

Maybe that cafe is in a tourist place, and it is difficult for its customers to convert the currency in each country, so they pay by bitcoin.
I can order coffee and pay first then get my order, as well as in restaurants, barbershops, and others. "I think we stay more than 10 minutes in those places."


Price volatility is the main reason why these places do not accept bitcoin as there is a constant income to manage the business. "The idea of relying on bitcoin seems to be a big risk; you may lose half of the revenue because of the price change."


The lack of positive news is the reason; it has been a long time without hearing any positive news, so everyone is trying to look for any good news.

Hmm, isn't this what litecoin was really all about - speeding up blocktimes and faster transactions and maybe a payment method that was technological improvement to btc. Also someone comment about bitcoincash card that you can buy in Starbucks. For me, makes whole process more complicated. I have seen projects like TenX will POS and accompanying card. One company really needs to make a functional crypto payment system that works. We will never get adoption unless this becomes a thing and people use only crypto for speculating and nothing more which is a shame.

I really hope to use cryptocurrencies in my life, but the truth is that Bitcoin is not available in my country! It can't be used as a way to pay!

Take a look at this video,they use ethereum to buy coffee in starbucks.crypto to product with no fees

https://youtu.be/LXnBEor6440

I think bitcoin was not made to use for a direct peer to peer micropayments transactions.but using crypto apps like this I think soon we can use our btcs in small transactions like in the video.

It is true that regular Bitcoin payment method does not look viable for the quick services. If we put LN out of question (seems fair enough as it is still in testing phase)  then subscription can be viable method for these kind of services. (where user prepaid for 30 coffee).

But real challenge is not how to pay the coffee but  what you are paying for coffee.  I do not think as  a coffee lover you will like the idea of daily calculating the price of your coffee in bitcoin vs  fixed price in fiat. Bitcoin need to be mass adopted to solve the price fluctuation problem where worth of bitcoin is not pegged with any fiat currency and we can independently purchase articles on fixed price of bitcoin.

Without any LN or a system that can scale current system TPS and confirmation time, buying a coffee is feasible but not convenient.
 

the real question is why would you buy coffee with bitcoin? why not pay cash for example. if you can find a valid reason for it and then if there is real demand then there is nothing stopping cafes from accepting bitcoin payments. the only reason why there aren't already is only one thing and one thing only: lack of demand.

transaction fees have only been high for a small period of time compared to the total lifespan of bitcoin.
and confirmation time is not a problem. as a business when you are accepting payment through any method you expect a certain level of fraud. cash, checks, credit cards,.... all have their own risks but you can't not accept them because there is a possibility that you may receive fake cash, get paid with stolen credit card or have your bitcoin payment double spent.
with that said the cases i have heard of in real world (like a food truck in US) they never cared about confirmation, they accepted payment and never got scammed.
additionally there are ways of doing a "risk analysis" when you receive a payment (something that is impossible to do when receiving other forms of payment!) and your cashier can kindly ask the payer to increase the fee for example if they paid with 0.1 s/b instead of 1 or send you a payment with an unconfirmed parent. but these things aren't common.

i don't see this as that unlikely at this point and it will eventually happen in the future so the question is only when not if. as i mentioned above it is only about demand and nothing else.