Putting your bitcoins where your mouth is? No problem if you are in Canada: the Tooth Corner Dental Offices have announced they now accept bitcoins in payment for their dentistry.

The chain of dental clinics spreads throughout Southern Ontario, operating in Mississauga, Scarborough, Brampton, Etobicoke, Brantford, Dundas, Stoney Creek and other cities.

The Mississauga Tooth Corner branch at Central Pkwy Mall owned by an entrepreneur and dental surgeon Dr Hassan El-Awour seems to be one of the first tooth specialists in the world to start accepting the cryptocurrency.

Transfers can be made using QR codes and a mobile app provided by BitPay bitcoin payment processor.

“It’s quite simple really. If you understand Bit Coin, you understand that you carry your coins in digital wallets with unique addresses. The address to your cell in a spreadsheet with many of them. You upload an app, and we upload Bit Pay on our mobile device and we allow you to pay in Bit Coin by scanning a Bar code on your phone,” reads the official Tooth Corner website.

The Tooth Corner’s decision marks a rare case of bitcoin used as a means of payment for a health-related service. So far the medical application has mostly been considered for the blockchain technology but not the cryptocurrency itself. Thus, Deloitte, a professional services company, takes part in developing a prototype payment system based on blockchain to be used in the healthcare sector. Estonian eHealth Foundation considers using blockchain to manage patients' records to avoid healthcare fraud. Most recently, Accenture, a multinational consulting service and a member of Hyperledger, came out with the project of a blockchain tracking system to fight counterfeit medicine.

And yes, it is Canada again. The country has pioneered with many bitcoin-related initiatives, including the first ever installed public BTM, the world’s first Bitcoin Embassy, opened in Vancouver, and the first ever case of accommodation rent accepted in bitcoins.

Svetlana Nosova