Bitcoin is going mainstream
May 13th, 2013
I came across this video about the Kreuzberg district of Berlin, Germany where Bitcoin is not just an internet currency, but it’s become a thriving part the local economy.
Nadim Chebli owns a record shop and recalls the first time he sold a Tom Wait’s album for Bitcoin. Florentina Martens owns a Parisian-style cafe that takes Bitcoin in the same neighborhood. Both report that there’s no typical Bitcoin user, and that their Bitcoin customers are just regular folks. At least a dozen other merchants in the area take the digital peer-to-peer currency.
What got me is that the in the video Kreuzberg boasts being the highest density of businesses accepting the currency in the world.
With the Bitcoin economy booming, it’s a race to be the first, because there’s a lot to do, which means there’s lost of stuff to do first.
Merchants in Kreuzberg say the Bitcoin ethos is similar to the politics of their community, which they describe as rebellious, left-wing, and against the rising threat of capitalism.
It’s pretty funny to me that a community of Bitcoin enthusiastic small business owners imagines that they are somehow radical left anti-capitalists. Maybe those words mean something different in Europe. But, who cares? If mainstream adoption of alternative currencies means everyone’s bizarre and contradictory political ideologies have to come along for the ride, so be it.
Heidi Leyton, a British tour guide who takes business people around Berlin said, “Looking at the way the economy is going and the way we’re dealing with it, particularly after what’s just happened in Cyprus, I don’t really trust having my money in the banks.” Wilko Bereit, owner of a local brewery said, ”I like the fact that Bitcoin scares people in suits, because if this thing were to really take off, it would bankrupt a lot of bankers.”
Ideology be damned. The writing is on the wall.
