I recently mentioned my fun experience of orange pilling one restaurant to accept BTC because I didn't have enough cash with me; the owner said I could pay next time, but I'm a bit annoyed by all the time being wasted to exchange for local fiat, so I asked do you accept Bitcoin? And everything happened next all started with this simple ASK.
He was quite uninterested at first, maybe don't want to have unnecessary work, then I said, but it takes less than 1 minute to create a Bitcoin wallet, it's really simple! And with all the inflation now, accepting Bitcoin is way better, he then started to be curious ( some background story: this happened in Turkey, one of the places having high inflation )
He then asked if I should use Binance? I said no, no need, all you need is to download Blue Wallet. I showed him how to create a new wallet, and he needed to write down the seed words to keep it somewhere safe; I then showed him how to send and receive, but the lesson learned from here is that starting with LN is better when pilling restaurants or cafes.
I decided to go there again for lunch and show the owner how to use LN; I didn't want to confuse him with all the on-chain and LN, custodial or non-custodial wallets, so to keep things simple, I asked him to download Wallet of Satoshi.
- First test: I sent 10 sats to his newly downloaded wallet to show him how much faster LN is.
- Second transaction: I showed him how he can change the setting to display TRY to smooth the charge and paid my lunch; I can tell he's impressed by how simple things can be.
I then showed him different ways to accept payment from customers over LN:
- Click receive and input the amount, then show a QR code - good for those in-person paying.
- Click receive and input the amount, then copy an invoice - good for those ordering online.
- Use an LN address, which is like a bank account - good for the repeated customers.
Some Details Might Help Onboarding Businesses
- Help the owners set the local currency displayed to smooth the charge
- Keep it SIMPLE, overwhelming is not a good way to start
- Start with BTC over LN is better when orange pilling restaurants or cafes
Takeaways
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Be the change, you don't need to wait for the whole world to start accepting BTC, all you need is people or businesses around you to start to accept it; you definitely don't need BlackRock or some companies to come in and say it's cool to use Bitcoin; NO, just use it, if two people consent that using Bitcoin as their value exchange, that it's enough.
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Do not expect others to do the work for you, the whole point with BTC is back to peer-to-peer, any third parties should add extra value if they want to be part of the trade.
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Find places that accept BTC in BTC map and supporting them is nice, but isn't it better if you can orange pill the places you eat or go all the time?
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People trust people around them more than the so-called influencers; funny enough, it all starts with you and me. How about a new fun for everyone? Go to your go-to places and pretend you don't have enough cash to pay, creating a chance for businesses to experiment with magic internet money ⚡️
Imagining more people started asking if they could pay in Bitcoin, business owners would eventually be smart enough to add it as a payment method!