So I thought I would explain a bit about what I learnt during my Sydney trip about bitcoin.

For those not following, this is a crazy experiment explained in this post.

So to get things straight. I technically have lost the experiment, as I spent some AUD in Sydney, on the following:

Topup for my SIM, needed to use my phone, to spend bitcoin!

Touristy things like maritime mueseum, the zoo, and having a car.

A few lunches where I was out with my partner and her friends and there were no bitcoin vendors.

I should mention even with those expendatures, I mainly spent bitcoin! I went to the following places.

Joostice in Newtown. The just had a public QR code to scan.

The Old Fitzroy in Woolloomooloo. They used BitPOS.

The Owl House. Also used BitPOS.

Black Star Pastry. I went to both Newtown and Rosebery shops. Only accepted in Rosebery :(. Used BitPOS.

There was also accomadation (which we didn't use), at the Wynyard Hotel (according to coinmap.org). Also, there was a pub called Spooning Goats (the SG) on York st, it was closed when I went past, and I couldn't make the meetup there on Wednesday night.

Along my travels, I met a few people to note:

The BitPOS founder, who has shown interest in setting up shop in NZ. I'll be working with him while I'm in NZ to get this done!

The BitScan founders. They have bitcoin news, and a map which seems a lot better than coinmap!

The Beers4Bitcoin organizer.

Many other enthusiasts.

Some vendors who wanted to share their story.

So BitPOS is a Point of Sale System, making it really easy to use bitcoin. They use exchanges in the background to get bitcoin back to AUD, or the vendor can keep the bitcoin. There is a demo available on their site. You should have a play, it might be in NZ soon!

I also had a good chat with the owner of the owl house. I went there twice, once on Sunday with the bitcoin meetup group, and once on Tuesday with my partner for a date night. Tuesday they have a special of 2 courses for $35.

I asked him what made him accept bitcoin, and how he kept track of it, and how he found bitpos. Reason for accepting was to get ahead of competition. He did have a few weeks to read up on it and get back to BitPOS to sign up, but he was hooked! He kept track of it as basically another credit card system, he was mainly pencil and paper, but he really liked BitPOS, and said that they were working on some features he would like as well.

I also briefly talked to a bartender at the old fitzroy, who just put it through their existing POS as a seperate credit card system, and had no issues.

I think that is a good summary of the sydney trip. If you have any questions/comments, let me know! I'll now focus on getting this all working in NZ.

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.