Anypay founder Steven Zeiler (left) talks with Darryl W Perry at the grand opening of Portsmouth’s Free State Bitcoin Shoppe in September
Portsmouth, New Hampshire-based cryptocurrency merchant payment processor Anypay has officially announced their exciting new DASH-Back program and Keene was chosen as one of the test markets! What is DASH-Back? Imagine instant rebates on every purchase you make at award-winning local merchants. No filling out forms, giving up your personal information, or waiting weeks for the rebate. It’s instant.
Now stop imagining, because this is real and it’s really happening in downtown Keene and the Monadnock region (and now all of New Hampshire).
I’ve tested DASH-Back in and around Keene and it’s working at what I would call ridiculous levels. It’s not hard to get 20% or more back on a purchase at merchants like Corner News, Local Burger, Hot Hogs BBQ, Little Zoe’s Pizza, Curry Indian Restaurant, Thirsty Owl, Lineage Vapors, and Route 101 Local Goods. (Plus in Alstead there’s Kirby’s Q and Hillsboro’s Taco Beyondo.) Even service providers like Wilder Automotive and Dr. Drower Dentistry are accepting DASH via Anypay’s system, which means DASH-Back is active at all those local businesses! Here’s a handy map of area businesses that accept DASH as well as area DASH Vending Machines.
Thanks to Anypay for the awesome incentive to spend cryptocurrency at local merchants across New Hampshire.
Liberty-oriented campers hanging out by the LRN.FM broadcast tent, Day One of Forkfest 2018
Forkfest 2018, the decentralized liberty camping event has started small but strong, kicking off yesterday at Roger’s Campground in the beautiful White Mountains of Lancaster, New Hampshire.
Like the first event last year, this year started slow on Thursday while many are still at work. By my estimates, more are here already this year than were here last year by this time. Not only that, the geographic variety of attendees is more pronounced. This year already has visitors from Lithuania and the United Kingdom as well as a couple from Virginia. Plus many others have indicated they intend to be here no later than Saturday.
What’s happening at Forkfest 2018? Good question! Parties, athletic events, a wedding, a letter-writing event for Ross Ulbricht, a Mesh Networking session, and others have been announced by various attendees. Of course, plenty of socializing and just hanging out by a campfire. There are already a couple of competing calendars that have popped up for attendees to use to promote whatever events they’re involved with. You can find those calendars via the unofficial Forkfest Forum.
Tavern Owner Laura Hardiman Poses with the Anypay App and Cryptocurrency-Loving Forkfest Attendees
If you’re in the area, come on up to Lancaster and join us. There are no tickets to Forkfest (and no organizers or board of directors)! Your only expenses to enjoy your time with other libertarians, voluntarists, and liberty-loving anarchists are your camping costs from Rogers Campground.
Forkfest continues through Monday the 18th and is expected to grow throughout the weekend. Of course, it’s not going to be the size of the fifteen year event that it was spawned from, the Porcupine Freedom Festival (aka Porcfest), which begins on Tuesday the 19th at noon and runs through Sunday the 25th
In addition, we also discussed Forkfest, the active NH Freedom Migration, and the advertising proposal I made this week to get DASH to renew their sponsorship of Free Talk Live, my national talk radio show. Plus, I announced the public beta of a very cool website where you can create printable DASH tips you can leave with servers at restaurants or give to whoever you want to introduce to cryptocurrency! It’s called cryptotip.org and it’s exclusive to DASH at this time. If you love DASH, you should give it a try and feel free to let me know what you think!
Thanks so much to the DASH Force News crew for the opportunity. Here’s the full interview:
The fifteen-year libertarian camping event in New Hampshire, Porcupine Freedom Festival aka Porcfest has long been renown as a cryptocurrency hotspot. It’s the place where Bitcoin’s early successful investors like Roger Ver, Erik Voorhees,and Charlie Shrem have all come to hang out with the New Hampshire libertarian activists and hundreds of visitors, all considering a move to the Shire for more freedom. One year, Roger Ver (aka “Bitcoin Jesus”) famously gave away dozens of Casascius “physical bitcoins”, which became a collectors item and are now worth significantly more than a bitcoin!
Porcfest, like all growing groups of people eventually had a schism, or “fork” as its called in the cryptocurrency world. Out of that, Forkfest was born in 2017 (under different names). While both are libertarian camping festivals held at Roger’s Campground, Forkfest is a decentralized event, meaning that each attendee decides what to do or create for others to do while at the festival. There are no organizers and no board of directors. Given the name of the event and those planning to attend, it will likely be a very cryptocurrency friendly event as Porcfest is. Last year for instance, crypto point-of-sale provider Anypay‘s founders came and helped throw a rave.
The Olde Bostonian Tavern and Grill
This year, I’m excited to announce that cryptocurrency acceptance has now migrated off the campground and will now be year-round in Lancaster, NH thanks to the new restaurant just down the street from the campground: The Olde Bostonian Tavern and Grill located in the Cabot Inn. The restaurant was created by Rogers Campground’s longtime manager, Laura Hardiman. She was instantly interested in taking cryptocurrency like Bitcoin and DASH due to her exposure to the various libertarian campers she’s met over the years. As of this week, she’s up and running and accepting multiple cryptos including BTC, BCH, ZCH, and DASH with the slick, easy-to-use, NH-based Anypay POS. If you’re planning to attend Forkfest and/or Porcfest, make sure you plan a dinner at The Old Bostonian at 200 Portland St and bring your cryptocurrency wallet. I recommend you pay with DASH and then watch your wallet to see what happens after the payment is sent.
Forkfest 2018 will be held this year from June 14th through 18th and Porcfest is immediately afterwards from the 19th through the 24th. That’s eleven days to give you a taste of what it’s like living around more liberty people than you could possibly know. You already know about the exciting NH Freedom Migration that’s been happening here – this is your chance to really experience it.
Unofficial Forkfest Logo
In other Forkfest news, more self-organizing is happening with two competing calendars springing up. One on Google Calendar, the other on Liberty.menu. There are discussion threads on the unofficial Forkfest forum about the calendars as well as food vendors announcing they plan to attend! Plus, according to one post on the forum, the lon
As we did in 2017, Keene cryptocurrency fans got together yesterday, May 22nd, to celebrate Bitcoin Pizza Day. What is Bitcoin Pizza Day? On May 22nd of 2010, a computer programmer made the first recorded real-life bitcoin purchase – two pizzas for 10,000 bitcoin. Today, that 10,000 BTC is worth over $80 Million dollars. A year ago, it was worth $25 Million.
We gathered at Little Zoe’s Take and Bake and ordered several pizzas. However instead of paying with BTC, as we did last year, this time we paid with DASH. Why DASH? Last year during the dramatic spike in fees on the Bitcoin Core network, several local businesses began accepting DASH as an alternative to BTC, to give their customers a choice.
In order to spend cryptocurrency, it’s the buyer who pays the network fee for processing the transaction (this is the opposite of the credit card system, where the merchant takes the fee out of their profit). Given that today fees to send BTC are typically about $0.40 and to send DASH about $0.01, it’s a no-brainer. No one would choose to spend BTC when a better option is available.
That better option is DASH, aka “Digital Cash”, a cryptocurrency that confirms four times faster than BTC and has really taken off at retail locations across southern New Hampshire. It proliferated because NH-based crypto point-of-sale merchant processor Anypay introduced DASH first with its release of their POS software in 2017. In fact, in an interview with Albert, the operator of DiscoverDash.com, a website that shows the physical locations of DASH-accepting businesses across the world, he told me that Keene is number three in the world for real-life DASH acceptance, behind Caracas, Venezuela at number one and Portsmouth, NH at number two!
Well well well. The 8th Anniversary of the first-ever cryptocurrency purchase (10,000 Bitcoins for 2 Papa John’s pizzas in Jacksonville, Florida), and digital cash enthusiasts everywhere are celebrating by gathering to eat pizza and and spread their favorite money. Portsmouth, New Hampshire (aka “Bitcoin Village“) was no exception!
