I'm wondering if there's any place in town that accepts Bitcoin. I checked coinmap.org already, but it doesn't mean there's nothing. There appears to be one place in Juarez, but I want to know if there's anything else.
Posted Mar 10, 2014, 7:52 AM UTC
I haven't found anywhere in el Paso besides tiger direct that accepts them. (And even then, I don't think physical locations take them).
Edit: We can probably convince a small business here to accept bitcoin if we all banded together and ask if they take them. It's a slow process, but I think it could happen here. Any ideas where to start?
I've already sent a few emails asking about bitcoin to those restaurants on Mesa around UTEP. I think they'll be likely to consider.
edit: You're definitely right it is a slow process, but if we focus our efforts on at least one business I think we'll get them to accept bitcoin.
Hi, I created a reddit account just for this thread. We accept bitcoins at OTR Driver Tax Services on Vinton Road. We also do book keeping, payroll, and permits. We specialize in taxes for over the road truck drivers, but we do taxes for any profession. Our fees are low and we always try to save you as much money as possible. We accept bitcoin, but if you call ahead of time we will accept any cryptocurrency you've got as long as its on an exchange and has a working blockexplorer.
I've added us to CoinMap (thanks for the link). Our phone number is (915) 886-3747 and our address is: 141 Vinton Rd, Vinton, TX 79821
I hope others start accepting it too. There's really no negatives to accepting bitcoin as payment. Especially if you're converting it immediately into dollars using Coinbase.
We haven't had anybody pay us in bitcoins yet though. So if any of you want to be the first feel free to step right up.
Awesome, people like you are what we need. If I ever need tax services I'll look to you, but currently I do not have any taxes to file. I hope someone does come in to pay in bitcoin. Your business is the first to accept BTC in El Paso on coinmap, or any other map I've seen. El Paso needn't be last in doing something like bitcoin. Thank you!
e: What made you decide to accept bitcoin?
Fiat is Fiat. The fact that Bitcoin is so easy to convert into US dollars makes it no different than other ledger services like Paypal or Google wallet. The benefits to merchants are huge. It's fast, irreversible, payment is fully logged and indisputable. It's a shame more people don't use it. The volatility doesn't matter at all to us. If we're being paid an amount of USD in Bitcoin it doesn't matter if it's 10 bitcoins or 0.00000010 bitcoins. Conversion is instant.
This is murica, we take dollars.
A serious answer would've been appreciated.
semi-serious: i honestly doubt the train is going to get rolling any time soon for bitcoin as it can tend to be fairly volatile and easy for the media to point at as something unsafe (the recent mt. gox issue comes to mind) and would probably be hard to convince a business owner that the "hassle" of taking digital currency would be worth it, especially in this town.
yeah it's probably only a few clicks on their end to manage the whole thing but that's still time taken out of their day to deal with something that would be hard to see the benefit of being a part of.
i think bitcoin will run its course in other major cities and if it makes it way here then so be it, if not then it wouldn't surprise me. if anything people should just fund their debit cards with bitcoin until retailers begin to see the power of bitcoin take over, if that should be the case.
You have a good point, but I think I'm a bit more optimistic with Bitcoin. Well, I hope it takes off and I hope El Paso isn't the last city to accept it.
Its no riskier or bigger of a hassle than setting your business up for credit card payments. Check out Coinbase. They convert your bitcoin payments into US dollars instantly. All the benefits of bitcoin with none of the volatility.
the truth is only what media portrays and what people are going to read. i know it's just as safe if not safer than other forms of currencies, the problem lies within the people storing the information/cryptocurrency. with that said i'd like to get into bitcoin at some point just to play around with it.
as for hassle i still don't see many business owners spending the time and effort to read up on it, but it'd be cool to see if a business near UTEP would get any transactions with it if they were to set it up
Why would you accept bitcoin now? The BitCoins is falling due to all the problems it is having, but i hope BitCoins are here to stay. Besides who has a good enough computer to mine bitcoins in El Paso?
If you accept bitcoins through coinbase you can convert them into US dollars instantly at the moment of payment. So it doesn't matter how volatile bitcoins are. You will end up getting the exact amount of money you are owed.
If you chose to hold the bitcoins then you're speculating like everyone else and subject to the whims of volatility. Could be good, could be bad.
As for "who has a good enough computer to mine bitcoins". You can mine other brands of cryptocurrency on a $300 video card and earn and average of $3 - $4 dollars a day after electricity costs. Might sound like nothing, but keep in mind there are some people in impoverished countries who work 12+ hours a day all year long and barely make $150 total a year.
There's also a form of "mining" that doesn't require computing power (aka "Proof of work". It's an algorithm called "Proof of Stake". Where simply holding coins will generate more coins. Sort of like dividends or interest.
Even then there are still many other ways to earn cryptocurrency. If anyone's interested I'd be glad to share what I've learned over PMs or even in here. Sorry about the wall of text.
Yes your right that there are alternatives to Bitcoin such as Litecoin and its doing fairly well at ~$13 a coin. But the "Proof of work" is rather irrelevant due to the fact it is inefficient because it also uses Computational power to decode the algoritm which utilizes the CPU. I live in El Paso and I haven't really seen any hardcore "Miners"...pun intended :)
I sincerely believe that cryptocurrencies are here to stay. That by the end of this year it'd be foolish to not accept bitcoin. The network is building momentum and it's now only a matter of time.
I would accept bitcoins as a merchant for several reasons: One a btc transaction incurs very low fees, 6 cents soon to be .6 cents, when compared to credit card transactions. Two there's no such thing as a charge back. Three it costs nothing to start accepting them, it's only free publicity. You may think differently, but to me these are some solid reasons.
I don't think really anyone has serious mining hardware in El Paso, but that doesn't really matter. Easiest way to get bitcoins is by accepting them for goods and services, the second easiest way is to just buy them.