A local business owner walked into the Anypay offices a few weeks ago.
“Would be awesome to take bitcoin at my restaurant. Do you guys… do that?”
Turns out he owns a pizza shop and likes bitcoin. Well isn’t that good timing? Bitcoin Pizza Day right around the corner, and a guy walks in ready to sell me pizzas for bitcoin. It was fate.
He downloaded Anypay, set some addresses, and took a payment.
“Cool! That’s it?”
Yeah, that’s everyone’s reaction the first time they use Anypay.
I asked him if we could bring some friends to his restaurant and use bitcoin. He was like, “Yeah!” So a week later, we went to try it out. Bought some spicy chicken wings and a case of cold Guinness beers to go. Tap, tap, tap. Scan, ding, cha-ching! Easy.
Okay, that worked.
He was like, “My cashier can just ring people up like this? On their phones? Okay, that sounds simple enough.”
So I went home, got on Meetup.com, and announced an event for May 22, Bitcoin Pizza Day. Got zero response there. Ha! But fortunately on Facebook, 10 people RSVP’d as Going, and 18 as Maybe. Not bad! But how many would show up?
Turned out to be a really nice day. 86 degrees Fahrenheit at 5pm in Portsmouth. Off I went early to the meetup with Steven so that I could help to train the staff on what was about to go down. People would soon be arriving to buy stuff from the restaurant, and the cashiers needed to know what to do.
I met them all. They were happy to see me. “OH, Albert told us you’d be here!” Two of them stepped up and said, “We need our phones, right?”
Tap, tap, tap. Cha-ching, cha-ching. $1.00 test payment. $0.50 test payment. $0.05 test payment. Okay, I think we got it.
Now for the first order.
“Two large pizzas with extra toppings, that’ll be $42.17. How would you like to pay?”
“Bitcoin, please.”
“Of course!” She smiled and popped open the app she had saved to her home screen. Tap, tap, tap. Ding! Confetti on her screen.
“Okay! That’ll be ready in about ten minutes. I’ll bring it out to you. Do you need some paper plates and napkins?”
Awesome. I was so happy. This was it! Another restaurant taking bitcoin. The real stuff. Directly to the owner. Feels good, man.
In the end, there were ten people who showed up (eleven if you include one couple’s toddler). Here are some pictures and videos of today’s meetup for the history books.
Yes, in the title of this article, I said “Birthday.” Now, most people consider the white paper’s publishing date to be bitcoin’s birthday, but they’re wrong! Bitcoin is not an idea. Bitcoin is money! The white paper conceived bitcoin. The genesis block gave it a heartbeat (every ten minutes). Bitcoin Pizza Day was bitcoin’s journey through the birth canal and out into the real world.
With great love and respect,
Derrick Horton
President, Anypay Inc.
P.S. Eight of us paid with BCH today. One person paid with a credit card (we made fun of him). One person (me) paid with BTC. Is it my favorite? No. I did it to honor the business owner’s preference. That’s what he wants, so I gave it to him.
Can you believe some people who live in the same town as this pizza place didn’t come to this event because the business owner doesn’t have a Dash wallet? Wow! Don’t let that be you! You will miss out on the fun.
The fact that we had this party here today and paid in his preferred way gives us credibility. Now when we go to him and ask if he would consider BitcoinSV, he will be listening with both ears because we are already paying customers who can give him something that few others can.
Be brave. Be fun. Be bitcoin.
Want to earn bitcoin at your business? Download the Anypay app for iOS or Android.
