In Sydney now. I've been juiced, watered, and fed, and I spent cash :(
For those not following, this is a crazy experiment explained in this post.
So the day started off with the price around $525 NZD for 1 BTC. I should get the AUD price... around $505 AUD for 1 BTC.
So I landed, it was exciting, there were birds on the runway in Wellington, so we were delayed...
So I saw an Optus shop, and decided to just buy a top up, $30 AUD (technically doesn't break rules of first post as it isn't NZD ;)). I decided that I need it to have communication, and use bitcoin on phone...
Got a rental car for the trip, it was all prepaid, and months ago. I've made a decision over the day that I'm probably going to do touristy things over the week with AUD, but will try for essentials with BTC. I am here with my partner after all...
Our first stop was to Joostice in Newtown, which is remarkably similar to Newtown, Wellington. We got there, and first thing I noticed was a sign showing that they accepted bitcoin!!! WOW. This is a sight for me in NZ, where nowhere does :P
I had a chat with the guy, and turns out he had heard of me, awesome! I ordered two smoothies (made pretty healthy, and tasted pretty good), and chatted to the guy while he made them. They are a not for profit juice bar, and make everything healthy. The bitcoin is kinda an honesty system, just pay what you think it should be worth, I just used the exchange rate my phone gave me, and paid $13 AUD in BTC.
Next stop was Black Star Pastry which Google maps told me was just around the corner. We picked up my partners friend, and went there. I said I would shout (they can shout when I find places that aren't BTC friendly :P, kinda cheating, but it is a holiday). So we get there, and get in line. They are extremely busy, but I ask about bitcoin anyway. Oh... they only accept it in the Rosebery store, which is surprisingly hard to show up in Google Maps. I paid for this in AUD (as I promised to shout, and it was too busy to try and convince my partner to pay :P.
A bit of a failure, but I'll live. I'll try the real bitcoin Black Star during our trip.
Lazed out the rest of the day, have been up since 4am NZ time, and both countries have just swapped daylight savings, so time is a bit of a mess :P.
Tonight there was a bitcoin meetup at the Old Fitzroy in town, I cruised along and asked at the bar whether the accepted, and they did. Man this is different to what I've experienced!
I ordered my beer, then the bartender got out a tablet and showed me a qr code. They were using a POS system called bitpos. Turns out the guy that made bitpos was sitting upstairs, and would later buy me a tshirt with bitcoin!
I ended up finding the meetup guys, after posting my description to the meetup page, and some guy with a tshirt with "@Beers4Bitcoin staff" on the back came up to me. Must be in the right place! Turns out everyone is upstairs, so I wander up.
I get pointed round a few folks, and a lot of people were interested in my crazy adventure. So far I said that Sydney was far more accepting than NZ, but in NZ I got more randoms just buying me things than Sydney (I did have to pay for my topup card after all ;)).
Had a few drinks, and I met the guy behind bitpos, and the folks behind bitscan. Bitscan developed a website that showed places that accepted bitcoin, and had far more coverage than coinmap. So I got the app and will check it out tomorrow. I noticed that their map of NZ didn't have some things I knew were accepted, so will flick them an email at some point.
The bitpos guy showed me a few websites, and we had a chat about how they went around explaining bitcoin, and how they got the vendors accepting. Turns out NZ could use bitpos if we had an exchange that had more market depth, and a better API. So if anyone knows anyone ... I have to say bitpos was crazy efficient. It was as simple as scanning a QR code, and wait a second, and bam, accepted. Much faster than this chip technology thing on my credit card...
We then decided to go visit The Owl House (which I forgot to put on yesterdays post!), which had ... delicious food ... for bitcoin! I'll definately come back here.
Tomorrow I'm most likely out sightseeing, and may not spend any bitcoin, but might actually spend AUD. But then, I am on holiday, so I think touristy things are alright, but I may go for a drink/food/smoothy, or something else I find with bitscan.
If you can offer assitance, just do it! I'm on twitter as haquaman, on reddit as haquaman, on IRC as aquaman (no h), and email at hugh AT davenport DOT net DOT nz.
Feel free to donate to 155WivS5TdBdU1UMQVZNLodywzCUdLdBBk.