In February 2024 I shared here the story of a small hotel owner who decided to accept Bitcoin (#425985)
Before starting, I shared with him some Bitcoin material in Spanish, including some of @DarthCoin guides about self-custody, running a node and understanding Bitcoin beyond just using it as a payment method. The idea was never to create a "Bitcoin hotel" or launch some big marketing campaign.
It was simply a normal small business with 8 rooms, a small Bitcoin sticker at the reception desk and one more payment option next to the inevitable fiat POS terminal.
Recently I asked him how he felt about the experiment after these years.
His answer surprised me: "Honestly, it was a failure."
I understand why he says that if he only looks at the number of bookings. Since February 2024, the hotel has sold around 5,800 nights, with an average price of around €100 per night. Out of those nights, only 19 bookings were paid with Bitcoin, representing 43 nights in total. Around 0.74% of all nights. If the only metric is "how many customers paid with Bitcoin", then yes, the number looks small.
But I honestly don't see a failure here. From the beginning, I told him: don't sell the Bitcoin. Keep it. Try to build a small Bitcoin treasury for the business. And that is exactly what happened. He has not touched those sats since then. Those bookings represent around €4,300 received in Bitcoin, approximately 0.10 BTC accumulated from real customers. At today's price of around €56,000 per BTC, that small treasury is worth around €5,600.
The important part is that those sats were never converted back into fiat.
A normal small hotel owner went from having zero Bitcoin exposure to holding a small Bitcoin treasury created directly from real customers. It is not going to change the business overnight, but something changed: Bitcoin became part of the business.
In my view, the most interesting part is not even the amount of BTC. It is the network effect.
A Bitcoiner from another country can walk into this hotel, see a small Bitcoin sticker at the reception desk and immediately know: "I can stay here." No advertising campaign. No corporate strategy. No permission needed. Just a small signal connecting people from different parts of the world.
The funny part is that 5 of those 19 Bitcoin bookings were mine, so I am responsible for more than 25% of this hotel's Bitcoin customers... I deserve a lifetime discount. But jokes aside, I think he is measuring adoption in the wrong way, I think that success is not only the number of payments, for me, success is a small business owner learning about Bitcoin, keeping his sats, building a treasury and becoming part of Bitcoin network. Two years ago: zero Bitcoin. Today: a small Bitcoin treasury and Bitcoiners sleeping in his hotel.
I still don't understand why he calls it a failure.
I guarantee you—I have absolutely no doubt in my mind about this, because I know how people think and act—that when the wheel was invented, and you gave them the option to either haul things on wheels or on their back, 99% of them opted to do it on their back. That's how they'd always hauled things and people are extremely conservative (despite all their larp to the contrary).
And the wheel is a good example. You can imagine that people really started relying on wheels more when they needed to haul some heavy ass shit, and you told them, "Well, you can either bring 2 or 3 more guys out here to help you, or, you can put it all on this here 4-wheeled cart..."
Right now and with the modern financial system, the 99% will just book a hotel room with their credit card. Magic bank money is what they know. By rejecting magic bank money in the 2020s, you are effectively already living and thinking the way normal people will decades from now, except you're so far in advance it makes you look weird.
I can't think of any major tech civilizational tech upgrade of the past that didn't proceed the same way.
p.s. Cave man are bullshit; meme is used exclusively for its lol-factor.
That's an interesting point, thanks for sharing it ;)
Definitely a great starting point. He will be ready when all these hodlers will start spending sats. Such great story! This could have easily been in the top of our TM7 newsletter for the ~AGORA territory. Bookmarked for next mont ;)
Sure! thanks for commenting :)
Is not a failure.
Don't look at the % of BTC payments compared with others.
Is more than 0 and that's all it counts.
Consistency and persistency matters.
small steps, real adoption 🧡