🚀 Introducing Bitpoints.me – A Bitcoin-native rewards system born from a coffeeshop hobby project ☕⚡

It all started with a simple idea: give customers rewards at my local coffeeshop. But instead of airline miles or hotel points (aka the biggest shitcoins of all time), I wanted something better—something that teaches people about Bitcoin.

Everyone knows how to use points. But what they don’t realize is:

Points get devalued in fiat terms.

Then they get devalued again by the issuer.

And they’re locked into platforms with zero interoperability.

So I asked: what if coffeeshop points were actually sats?

💡 Enter Cashu – a perfect fit. Custodial? Sure. But so are all rewards systems. And for a coffeeshop, rugging users is bad business. So I forked cashu.me, rebranded it, and launched a quick PWA: points.trailscoffee.com.

Users see “points.” But behind the scenes, they’re 1:1 pegged to sats. The mint shows sats. The wallet shows points. Simple UX. No friction. Just like a gift card—no login, just a code.

🔧 Not a dev myself. I leaned heavily on nodeacademy.org and the amazing Vancouver-based Pacific Nodewest community. Their ideas, feedback, and support were invaluable.

But I wasn’t satisfied. I wanted:

Offer A 10% discount when paying with Points/sats. AND

A model where rewards gain value over time, flipping the traditional system. AND

A way for local kids to use their points—without needing a phone.

I explored Bolt Cards. Cool tech, but still phone-dependent. Tried Lightning Piggy on ESP32, but micropython was beyond my AI-vibe coding skills.

Then came the crazy idea 💥: merge Bitchat with Cashu.

Why? So kids could use their balance at the coffeeshop offline. Cashu tokens are bearer instruments. As long as the POS is online, they clear.

After some effort, I merged bitchat-android with cashu.me, and that’s how Bitpoints.me was born.

🎉 A Bitcoin-native rewards system:

Interoperable with Lightning

Familiar UX (points/gift cards)

Educational for pre-coiners

Community-first, not corporate

This is just the beginning. If you're building, curious, or want to bring sats to your local community, let's connect.

👉 bitpoints.me

⚡ Powered by Cashu

🌱 Inspired by Trails Coffee

🧠 Supported by Vancouver Bitcoin & nodeacademy.org

***Not a software dev, used AI heavily, please don’t use in any other environment other than for testing purposes***