Except if you actually read the linked page it says that it's at least partially due to the 7% fees have to deal with when converting the BTC back to sterling, which is all they're really interested in.
Add on whatever fees you pay to get hold of the BTC in the first place and you have quite an expensive system.
of course, there really is no need to pay fees to exchange BTC for GBP. Posting a sell ad on bitcointalk.org is likely to net you someone who will take them off you for between 2 and 5% above mtgox daily average.
A lot of Bitcoin holders bought/mined them at much lower prices than current $100. Compare this 7% premium when buying things to a potential 20-30% capital gains tax you'd have give up when cashing out via exchange.
in the UK if your gain in any tax year is less than £10,600 you do not need to inform HMRC, so any gain made by purchasing beer is unlikely to be of concern to them.
I guess so. But for those who want to avoid paying it, buying things daily is less risky than going through the bank. Just like with earnings in cash that you spend in brick and mortar stores.
Exactly, paying with a credit card is more anonymous than paying with Bitcoin. With the former, only the CC company, the merchant, and presumably the government can see what you purchased. With Bitcoin, anyone with a blockchain explorer can see your when and how much you transacted.
That's a bit inaccurate, your identify isn't attached toe the Bitcoin public ledger. It also has to be inferred through 3rd parties such as your wallet or some BTC exchange.
While bitcoin can be anonymous (buy with cash, use a mixing service, change your bitcoin address every time, only pay over tor/i2p), they aren't made for that. Also keep in mind that every transaction is public, even if it can't be traced back to you.
? You're confusing security with anonymity. The bitcoin mining strategy ensures that transactions are secure, untampered (ID theft? counterfeit bills? credit hijacking?), thus securing anonymity if it is developed (throw away accounts, as said above) when and where needed.
The problem with classical currency is that anyone can spoof anyone else and the system inherently cannot prevent this. Fraud correction is a painstaking manual/organic process involving customer service, account IDs, and headache.
Yes, the value of the dollar also fluctuates, but over 30 years it has ranged only around 30%. Whereas bitcoin has ranged 4000% in a single year. Not sure any pub would want to accept that volatility, nor would any patron.
If (as has happened several times before) bitcoin doubled in value against GBP, would you be happy to continue paying the equivalent of double for a pint?
They can't price on BTC until Bitcoins have more utility. At the moment the only utility Bitcoins have for the pub owners is to convert into cash so they have to peg them on sterling.
I can confirm from first hand experience that, regardless of the quality of the Bitcoin transaction experience, the quality of the beer here is absolutely top notch. Also the food is very good and they have a pretty decent selection of board games behind the bar. Highly recommended if you can endure the trek out to Hackney - if you're interested in checking the pub out, you won't be disappointed.
It's interesting to hear about offline merchants accepting bitcoins. I wonder how much of it has to do with the fixed card processing fees as a component of the small transaction size.
The goal would seem to be when the restaurant can pay their bills in bitcoins, so they never have to convert it to a fiat currency at all.
I also wonder how much of it is novelty/PR. This move gets a lot more people talking about them, and you'll get some people who just want to spend bitcoins in meatspace.
Not only will accepting Bitcoin help this pub save some money on fees, it is very likely attract some new customers who happen to be Bitcoin enthusiasts. Win-win!
When I've made bitcoin payments, confirmations have usually reached a sufficient threshold in 30 seconds or less. That doesn't mean that your transaction has made it into the blockchain, only that enough servers have validated that your transaction is good based on their state and that they will hold your transaction until it is in the blockchain.
I haven't tried it yet but keen to head up there, there is a meetup of the London Bitcoin Group on there this Sunday - http://www.meetup.com/London-bitcoin-meetup/events/122553592...