My Campus Convenience, Keene – Now Accepting Cryptocurrencies!
As of last week, Keene now has two well-known and busy convenience stores that are accepting multiple cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin (BTC), DASH, and Bitcoin Cash (BCH). Corner News, the Main Street icon for over 100 years has been accepting crypto since 2013 for various convenience items and smoking accessories, but they now have a crypto-accepting competitor in the form of My Campus Convenience.
“CampCo” has been in business a long time and is very conveniently located to the Keene State College campus, located at its northwestern end, at 152 Winchester Street in Keene, right across from Thirsty Owl, a crypto-accepting bar. Thirsty Owl’s owner, Darren Humphrey, recently took over management of My Campus Convenience and immediately implemented accepting cryptocurrencies as one of his first changes.
It’s a no-brainer. Humphrey has obviously had a good experience with cryptocurrency acceptance at the Owl. Taking crypto from customers means a business gets 100% of every sale, unlike credit cards that take away about 3% of every sale, and an even larger percentage of your profit. Unlike US Dollars or other fiat currency that go down in value due to constant inflation, Cryptocurrency also has the potential of going up – or down – in value, so many local business owners like Humphrey are holding it for the long-term. Though it’s not difficult to turn cryptocurrency into US Dollars, if that’s what the business owner wants to do.
The new addition of Campus Convenience to the growing roster of crypto-accepting Keene-area businesses solidifies our place as one of the top few cities in the world for businesses-per-capita that are accepting crypto. We beat even the “Bitcoin Cash City” of Townsville, Australia where a conference will be held this week to promote that area.
Crypto Stickers at My Campus Convenience
There’s no doubt what Townsville’s crypto community have accomplished is impressive, but their city’s population is over 178,000, while Keene’s is about 23,000. That means with 78 BCH-accepting businesses, according to the “Marco Coino” app, Townsville has one business for every 2,293 people while Keene’s 14 BCH-accepting locations gives it a ratio of one business for every 1,642 people. That’s great, but we are bested in the Bitcoin Cash acceptance category by Ljubljana, Slovenia where a payment processor called Elipay is having tremendous success getting allegedly as many as 220 area businesses including at least one grocery store to accept cryptocurrency including Bitcoin Cash. With 279,631 in population, that gives Ljubljana a ratio of one business for every 1,271 people.
The other main crypto spent on-the-ground here in Keene is DASH, which has been accepted by businesses across Keene since 2017. It was with DASH that New Hampshire-based Anypay pioneered their “DASH-Back” program , which pretty consistently gives instant 10% rebates to customers making a purchase at merchants who run the Anypay system. In Keene almost every business that accepts cryptocurrency from customers in real life is using Anypay’s point-of-sale. Eventually, Anypay launched a Bitcoin Cash-back system as well. Both of their crypto rebate robots are funded by donations and are active at the time of this writing.
Stay tuned to Free Keene for the latest from Crypto Mecca, as more liberty-loving crypto fans move here thanks to the ongoing NH Freedom Migration, the crypto economy here will keep getting better. And don’t forget to drop in to Campus Convenience for smoking accessories, CBD, alcohol, snacks, and more – all for cryptocurrency. Plus here’s a cool map from Anypay that not only shows you where crypto is accepted in Keene, but also when the last time was that someone bought with cryptocurrency.
When I heard the first ever Straight Pride Parade was happening just an hour from my house, I knew I had to go. I brought along my video camera and a microphone with the goal of conducting as many interviews with interesting people as possible. No gotchas, just straight questions: “What brought you out today,” and “What do you think of the event?”
While I am pouring through yesterday’s footage, I came across 4 minutes of particularly defining footage. A man walking down the sidewalk gets blocked by a woman, and then a group of people, and prevented from moving. He yells for help but his calls are unanswered. The masked thugs revel in their positions of power and his vulnerability. They have deemed him the enemy. Why? That is unclear. But they have him. And they are going to project all their anger and hatred onto him. He smiles. He does not relent.
Last week, Nobody filed for this year’s Keene mayoral election and Free Keene broke the news. The next day, Nobody was interviewed by a reporter from the Union Leader, the major newspaper based in Manchester. The UL then published their report on Nobody’s campaign on Friday, which was the first mainstream media story on Nobody.
Nobody’s filing for mayor was also picked up by Coin Telegraph, which is a major cryptocurrency news source. They also published the same piece in a few other languages.
News reports are to be expected during a political campaign and the Nobody story definitely has viral potential, but no one expected an endorsement to come from the editorial board of the state’s top newspaper, which happened this weekend in the Union Leader’s Sunday edition!
Newspaper editorials are considered to have come from the entire editorial staff of the paper and is therefore unattributed to one particular writer. For the record, I’m including the full text of their editorial piece below. Please visit ElectNobody.com to learn more about Nobody’s campaign. (more…)
Nobody has shaken up this year’s contentious Keene mayoral election by filing his candidacy before the ‘major’ candidates this morning at the city clerk’s office in downtown Keene. It was an unusual scene today, as I was also in attendance with Nobody and former mayoral candidate Robert Call. For those unfamiliar with the process, when the City of Keene opens its filing window at 8am, there’s always a line of the most punctual candidates. I predicted I’d see current city councilor and 2019 mayoral candidate Mitch Greenwald there waiting and a few others, and I was right. Greenwald in fact had a large number of supporters present, at least 20 inside city hall, many wearing Greenwald campaign shirts. Even more supporters were gathered two doors down at Luca’s for a campaign breakfast.
Nobody shook hands with Greenwald and informed him of his intention to run for mayor of Keene. Greenwald responded positively by saying Nobody’s campaign was “needed” explaining that it would bring levity to what so far has been a very serious race between Greenwald and another sitting city councilor, George Hansel. Nobody is a previous tenant of Greenwald, who is a successful local realtor who also managers a large number of rental properties in town.
This election year has been unusual, at least in the several municipal election cycles I’ve observed. Though the filing window for candidates just opened today and ends on September 10th, Greenwald and Hansel announced their intentions to run months ago, and signs started popping up for both candidates in a heated visibility campaign unlike anything I’ve seen in Keene elections thus far.
Nobody, then Rich Paul, released from jail for selling cannabis.
Though anyone else registered to vote in Keene is certainly able to file for $5 at city hall, it’s possible the two councilors’ expensive mayoral campaigns could be upset by the political newcomer. Excluding Nevada where “none of the above” is a non-binding choice on ballots, this may be the first time anyone anywhere has ever been able to truly vote for Nobody. Nobody’s campaign may even excite people who have quit voting or have never voted into actually showing up at the polls.
Anything’s possible with Nobody.
Nobody is a longtime Keene resident that loves cannabis, cryptocurrency, and freedom. He’s a blogger here at Free Keene and has also launched a campaign website at ElectNobody.com. Follow him there or watch for updates here, but definitely stay tuned to the hottest and likely most entertaining mayoral race in Keene for years!
Heroic Open-Air Drug Market at Porcfest 2019 During #FreeRoss Auction
Ross Ulbricht has been in prison since 2013 and is sentenced to stay there for the rest of his lifetime, plus another lifetime and forty years on top, all for the “crime” of creating and operating a website known as the Silk Road. Ross is a longtime advocate of liberty, even when he was acting as the head of Silk Road, “Dread Pirate Roberts”. He’s a lover of peace, not an evil drug gang kingpin, as the government goons were trying to portray him. The sham of a “trial” they forced on him was a travesty including corrupt cops and more. Rather than retell the sordid story here, I recommend you watch or read Railroaded.
It was a moving presentation and was followed the next day by the historic #FreeRoss auction! With dozens of items donated, the illegal auction ran for more than two hours and raised over $10,000 for Ross’ legal defense fund. Of course, many winning bidders paid for their items with cryptocurrency like Bitcoin. The auction results alone are impressive, but real civil disobedience history was made at the auction, in two ways. One, auctioneer Jay Noone was unlicensed by the New Hampshire state gang. That made the entire auction an act of civil disobedience. Two, at the very end of the auction, a cannabis grower from Maine donated two eighth-ounces of cannabis and they were auctioned off to two lucky winners, one of which was me, the other was Cop Blocker Angie Gordon. This auction was the icing on the cake for this year’s Porcfest – what fun and productive civil disobedience. When was the last time, if ever, that cannabis was auctioned in New Hampshire? This had to be a first.
Here’s a video featuring all of Lyn’s speech, her intro to the auction, a little bit of auction footage, full footage of the cannabis part of the auction, and a song from musicians Josh Noone and Jordan Page:
Free Talk Live host Mark Edge delivered a speech he called, “What is Freedom?” at the Porcupine Freedom Festival this year. Sadly, in recent years, Mark has become a jaded activist and has looked heavily at moving to some “special economic zone” project or another, or perhaps Seasteading. This was part of the focus of his speech, but luckily his negativity was trounced by facts presented by Free State Project founder Jason Sorens.
As he’s explained many times on Free Talk Live, Mark is disappointed with his confused perception of the activism happening in New Hampshire – he doesn’t believe many people are doing any, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary that he’s not willing to even investigate for himself. All of the amazing political success stories or other outreach successes are not persuasive to him. Government is slow to change, and Mark is soon to turn 50 and worries his time is running out, so why bother trying to change the system when he now believes he can just bribe a government to leave him alone? That’s the plan with the “special economic zone” concepts – pay off a government for more freedom. If you think that will work, I have a bridge to sell you.
Anyway, after his speech, Free State Project founder Jason Sorens called Mark out and corrected his various misinformation. The fact is, the New Hampshire freedom migration is a tremendous, unprecedented success. The activism happening here is varied and ongoing and the more libertarians move here, the better. Mark seems ready to give up, when technically we’ve barely just gotten started. The Free State Project’s official five-year move window began in 2016 and doesn’t end until 2021.
Mark has pointed out his frustration over the FSP’s slogan, “Liberty in Our Lifetime” given that many in the FSP have died in the last 15 years. I’ve tried to explain to him that it’s just a slogan. The odds we’ll end the coercive state in our lifetime are quite slim, however there’s no better place to give it our best shot than here in the Shire.
That’s not to say Seasteading or a special economic zone is a bad idea – I wish those projects much success and if they ever get anywhere, I’ll seriously consider a move there. Meanwhile, New Hampshire has more libertarians, voluntarists, and liberty-loving anarchists in the same geographic area than anywhere else on the planet. More are moving in every month. Plus, the natives here are naturally more freedom-friendly than places like New York. Yes, progress toward freedom can be frustratingly slow, but no one said this would be an overnight success or a cakewalk.
