Bitcoin Embassy New Hampshire, which recently launched inside Route 101 Local Goods at 661 Marlboro Street in Keene, is not the first Bitcoin Embassy in the United States, but it is the second one! The first was opened earlier this year in Atlanta. There are others in various parts of the world but Bitcoin Embassy New Hampshire is the only one in the Northeast part of North America.
The Bitcoin Embassy will be a place for learning, with “Bitcoin 101” classes already available, teaching the basics of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. Classes are pay-what-you-can-afford, which means if you can’t afford to pay, you can still attend for free. Drop in to take a tour at 661 Marlboro St in Keene and sign up for a class, or visit online at BitNH.me.
Any Bitcoin conference can have big names in the industry come speak, but only this conference could have this panel. As longtime readers here know, New Hampshire is a special place due to our global lead in real-life cryptocurrency acceptance. The reason is because of the concentration of libertarian crypto activists we have here that are doing the boots-on-the-ground work to make amazing thing happen here, thanks to the ongoing NH Freedom Migration.
For my expert activist panelists I selected Chris Rietmann of the new Bitcoin Embassy New Hampshire, and my fellow Free Keene bloggers Darryl W Perry and Derrick J Freeman, so we had activists representing both of NH’s crypto hotspots, Keene and Portsmouth. The guys did an amazing panel and I think it gives an excellent taste of what it’s like to be here in Crypto Mecca. You can watch the full hour-long panel here:
The first car purchased at a dealership directly for Dash | AutoFair Nashua
Something big happened this week.
The famous “Bitcoin Pizza” story was overshadowed by a punky, lesser-known cryptocurrency quietly occupying the number 12 spot on CoinMarketCap. The implications of this week’s event will be felt for decades and change the way the mainstream views cryptocurrencies forever.
One question plagues cryptocurrency users everywhere. Whenever you talk with doubters about the numerous advantages of using digital cash over fiat, invariably the response comes:
“But what can I buy with it?”
This question drives you nuts. You explain that at first, there was nothing you could buy with it. Then, there was pizza. Then coffee shops and yoga studios started accepting it. Then you could use a handful of janky websites to buy some (sometimes expired) digital gift cards. But now there is something much more real. More tangible. More serious.
A brand new car.
Yeah, you read that right. This week, the largest chain of auto dealerships in New Hampshire, AutoFair, sold a vehicle off one of their lots in exchange for DASH (digital cash).
A year ago, Bitcoin (BTC) was in pretty bad shape with its fees climbing to ridiculous levels due to some arbitrary network limitations. This caused a lot of problems in the marketplace with people not wanting to use their BTC to make purchases at local businesses around the Keene area who were accepting the world’s first decentralized cryptocurrency.
Thankfully, Portsmouth-based Anypay came along to save the day at retail with the launch of their Point-of-Sale crypto merchant payment processing system that added DASH as an alternative to BTC. With the ability to choose what to accept at their POS for the first time ever, local merchants eagerly jumped onboard with Anypay and got set up to accept DASH in addition to BTC. As a result, customers were able to avoid the BTC fees by paying with the sane, fast, affordable DASH.
However, only retail’s problems were fixed by Anypay. Cryptocurrency activists in the area were still hurting because the BTC fees had killed one of the most effective forms of direct outreach – printable Bitcoin tips! We had for many months been giving away printed Bitcoin (BTC) tips to local restaurant servers and others with whom we wanted to gift BTC. These tips were made possible by an innovative site called BCTip.org. Sadly, the insanely high Bitcoin fees at the time made using BCTip impossible to justify in late 2017. Since BCTip had at one time been an advertiser with Free Talk Live, my radio show, I reached out to the operator and asked if he were considering adding any other cryptos to the site and he said he was not but pointed out the site was open source.
Creating six $10 Cryptotips with Bitcoin Cash.
So, I teamed up with Michael Hampton of Ringing Liberty and he actually programmed a whole new site from scratch to do the same thing that BCTip did for Bitcoin (BTC), except do it for the alternative cryptocurrencies like DASH and Bitcoin Cash. We launched quietly with a public beta early this year with DASH as the only initial crypto available to print as tips. This month, I’m happy to announce we’ve now added Bitcoin Cash (BCH) to the site and it’s now the default option when creating new tips.
These printed, business card-sized tips are super-easy to use. Just visit Cryptotip.org and create a batch of tips in the US Dollar value of your choice (or international currencies including GBP, EUR, RUB, JPY). Choose which crypto you want to use to fund the tips, DASH or Bitcoin Cash, put in your refund address and print up the tips. Cut them out and then put your tips in your wallet so you can easily give them out wherever you go.
When your recipient visits the URL on their tip, they’ll be given a brief introduction to cryptocurrency and instructed on installing a wallet so they can redeem their tip into their crypto wallet. If they never redeem it, YOU GET YOUR CRYPTO BACK! When you create the tips, you choose the expiration time. THe default is one month. Once the tips expire, you get any unclaimed tips back in your wallet. Cryptotip is a killer app for crypto and a low-risk way to spread cryptocurrency to new people.
They make great stocking stuffers or other gifts as well. Maybe you can think of new, fun ways to give away your Cryptotips!
Don’t forget, a Cryptotip should only be given as a bonus on top of an already good cash tip. You want the server to take you seriously and look at the Cryptotip so be sure to be a good representative of crypto and leave your Cryptotip in addition to your cash. Visit Cryptotip.org to create and print as many tips as you’d like!
Sadly, the very exciting DASH-Back promotion that had been mostly going strong for nearly two months in Keene and Portsmouth has become sporadic in recent days. I’m not sure if it’s technical difficulties or a planned change. I hope it’s the former and that it will return, but for the moment, DASH-Back is effectively over and is no longer providing consistent rebates, as it was over the past couple of months.
As a result of the loss of DASH-Back, I’ve re-edited and combined my recent how-to videos featuring Thomas Parisi of Cheshire TV’s NIGHTSVP visiting Route 101 Local Goods in Keene, NH armed with a cryptocurrency wallet called Coinomi on his phone and a $20 bill. Here’s the new video featuring both parts:
First, in under two minutes, Route 101’s proprietor Chris Rietmann showed Thomas how to buy crypto at the Cryptocurrency Vending Machine. Then, Thomas spends some of his newly-purchased DASH at the register, showing how easy it is to spend crypto at the point-of-sale, thanks to the NH-based Anypay merchant crypto payments processor. Anypay is the POS merchant system in use at nearly all cryptocurrency-accepting businesses in the Monadnock region.
You can see a map of local businesses that are accepting crypto and learn a lot more about why they are accepting it at MonadnockCrypto.com. In the area? Please join our local Meetup group, now with over 100 members!
Thanks to the NH-based company Anypay who provides Route 101’s Point-of-Sale system for crypto-acceptance, it’s super-easy and fast to pay with cryptocurrency in various businesses across Keene! Reasons to accept it at your business, and more can be found at MonadnockCrypto.com.
Before he paid for his DASH coaster, Thomas purchased $20 worth of DASH at the Crypto Vending Machine, also at Route 101 Local Goods. You can see that video here.
