When I went to a’cryptocurrency payment store’ 5 or 6 years ago,
0 transactions over the years… How about Tesla?
A skin care store in Myeong-dong, Seoul that has been accepting Bitcoin payments since 2017. The president said, “5 years ago, there were customers paying with bitcoin at a rate of 1-2 people a week, but after 2019, they were cut off.” Reporter Oh Hyun-ah
December 2013, the first bitcoin craze in Korea. A Paris Baguette merchant in Incheon began selling bread for bitcoin instead of cash. Afterwards, stores that accept bitcoins have appeared one after another in Itaewon, Myeong-dong, Seoul, etc. Even after 8 years, some stores that accept cryptocurrency (virtual currency) remain. However, it has been a long time away from public interest. Incheon Paris Baguette, which used to be Korea’s No. 1 bitcoin payment destination, is still open, but no longer accepts bitcoins. This is because the franchise owner has changed. The current franchise owner politely declined the request for coverage and asked: “Bitcoin payment? When will that ever talk about it?”
When I asked a professor who was well versed in blockchain,’does Bitcoin have the value of existence as a currency’, I heard the same answer. “Money? When will that ever talk about it?” He said, “The claim that bitcoin can replace currency has been abolished by the industry for a long time,” he said. “Who is using it as a payment method when the value is plummeting?”
As he said, bitcoin is the “final king of volatility,” whose value fluctuates by over 10 million won per day. At Bithumb on the 23rd of last month, bitcoin rose to 63.36 million won at 7 am and dropped to 52 million won at 9 pm.
Rapidly fluctuating every day… Who will use it
Mastercard of the United States, which announced that it would introduce a cryptocurrency payment service, also drew a line that “I don’t use Bitcoin” for this reason. “Bitcoin is too volatile and takes a long time to transact, so it is not suitable as a payment method,” said Anne Cairns, Vice Chairman of Mastercard. “If you pay in bitcoin at a cafe, it only takes 10 minutes to complete the payment, and when the ordered coffee comes out, it can be 40% expensive.”
Reporters Hankyung surveyed 50 stores in Seoul that were recently listed on’Coinmap’, an internet site that informs offline stores for cryptocurrency payments. There are seven businesses that say “I still receive bitcoin”. The rest answered, “I took it for a while in the past, and then stopped” or were not contacted due to business closure.
The advantage of bitcoin payments experienced by self-employed people is that “there were customers deliberately coming to use bitcoin”. As a drawback, many pointed out that “it takes longer than I thought.” President A, who runs a seafood restaurant in Gajwa-dong, has been receiving bitcoins since October 2017, but stopped in 2019. He said, “At one time, 4 million to 5 million won per month was bitcoin sales,” he said. “No one used it, and I also disposed of the bitcoin I had.”
At a restaurant in Itaewon, you can still pay for food with 14 types of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, ADA, Stellar, and Cosmos. “When I first received cryptocurrency, there were people coming up to pay in Busan or Daegu,” said President B. Sometimes it took 30 minutes to an hour to transfer money after payment, but he said that he did not pay much attention because it was not a frequent occurrence.
“The use has been discontinued since 2019”
President C, who runs a skin care shop in Myeongdong, has received bitcoin payments since 2017. In the hope that the number of customers will increase even a little, he posted a post on his blog saying, “I also receive bitcoin”. Then, one or two customers a week were counting with Bitcoin. However, as the coin craze disappeared, this step has ceased after 2019. An official at an academy in Jamsil that stopped paying with cryptocurrency said, “There was a student who was paying with bitcoin among international students. Some of the self-employed who received bitcoin payments kept the bitcoins they received from consumers in their wallets without converting them into won. “Bitcoin was a very small part of sales anyway,” said E.
Since the birth of Bitcoin in 2009, numerous experiments have been conducted at home and abroad to introduce it as a currency that can be used in everyday life. However, Bitcoin hasn’t gotten right. Then, the industry tried to transform the image into’digital gold’ instead of’digital currency’ with the feature of scarcity. The bull market that has continued since the Corona 19 crisis is the result of the new concept of “means of storing value”, not “an medium of exchange,” being eaten by investors.
Tesla develops payment network directly
In the midst of this, the US Tesla reignited the currency debate, saying, “I will make it possible to buy a car with Bitcoin.” The CEO, rather than Mason of cryptocurrency software company TokenSoft, said that based on his experience, he does not recommend Bitcoin payments when buying a car. Rather, it purchased Tesla’Model 3’through a bitcoin payment broker in 2016. The price of bitcoin, which was 400 dollars at the time, is now 50,000 dollars. Reuters reported, “I bought an electric car with 130,000 dollars worth of bitcoin at the time, but if I left the bitcoin, the current value is over 14 million dollars.”
Foreign media presented two possibilities for Tesla to accept consumer Bitcoin payments through brokerages or to develop its own payment network. Some believe that Tesla may not cash in the bitcoins it received as the difference. It means that it can be buried as an investment asset, hoping that the price will continue to rise.
Reporter Hyunwoo Lim/Hyunah Oh [email protected]