We like to make fun of Europeβs approach to Bitcoin and tech regulation, but there are more shops accepting Bitcoin in Paris than in all of the United States.
Discussion
Hmm this shows 44 in Paris and maybe 400 in USA..
www.btcmap.org
Those numbers are useless, most of the US locations are ATMs, others are out of date, spam or simply outdated. At maximum, a large US city has two to three places that take sats. SF, LA, Seattle, Chicago for example all have at most two places, cumulative
I dunno man, a lot of them seem verified pretty recently.
If you know different, perhaps you could update their status?
Its easy to do and I feel its a valuable resource for building bitcoin from the ground up. I've used it to travel around spending bitcoin (in central america) and it was pretty reliable.
Iβm not trying to be hostile, maybe my experience is different from yours. Have you been to the US in 2024 or even live there? Have you tried to spent sats anywhere around the states? What was your experience?
i don't doubt your experience (or have any problem with your attitude π )
no i haven't been in the US. but i'm just inviting you to consider, if you know one of these businesses doesn't accept bitcoin, to update the map accordingly (and it could also be an opportunity to help them accept it again if they're interested but maybe lost track of wallets or something).
i think this map is a big part of how we win
Yeah I love the map! Wherever I go I tend to maintain it, and on my trips to the US that always meant deleting merchants. You can see that cities I visited recently show no more merchants. Thatβs what makes me think there are none in other areas too. As there are no Bitcoin users, there are also no BTCMap maintainers there and the map looks the way it does
oh i just realized you're the guy who made the bedford trip report π
as someone connected to the uk, the idea that *bedford* would turn out to be the crucible of the revolution is π€― π π π
I was amazed too! More trip reports to come! Thank you for following along!
Hey how about the Isle of Man next time...
..maybe not this time of year but will be great in the summer, I'm seriously considering
Since covid tyranny struck I always had this idea that things would happen by freedom-lovers being squeezed out of the mainstream, looking for places they could build a life - and all ending up clumping together
If you have a few dozen people around you, you're done - that's a community as far as I'm concerned, and things are only likely to grow from there
I really think that that's happening, we've passed the tipping point - eg el zonte in salvador. It doesn't matter what happens to bukele, there's a community there now, people have found each other and they're not going back
Isle of Man sounds like a great destination! I also want to go to Madeira
I had Madeira on the list too but nostr:npub1fjqqy4a93z5zsjwsfxqhc2764kvykfdyttvldkkkdera8dr78vhsmmlekukind of put me off π
he says Bulgaria tho!
haha i am not going back there after i registered a corporation, filed all my taxes, and never got any refunds for the taxes on my pc or other work stuff
their tax office expects me to pay some 1400 euros or something to shut down my company and i'm like, nope, you never fucking refunded me my work expenses for which reason i did this thing in the first place
amusingly, another hotspot lesser known in Plovdiv, Bulgaria is Botev PFC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botev_Plovdiv
Sofia has more spots on btcmap but plovdiv has a lot and it's got a very connected hacker community there, it has long been a place for CS people (Sofia and Plovdiv are two major outsourcing hubs)
it's pretty funny though how much the footballers are leaning in to bitcoin, cool i mean, really
π¬