Dramatic increase in bitcoin-bars in Copenhagen prior to pub crawl friday

Not long ago there was only very little you could buy with bitcoins in Copenhagen.

But while the cryptocurrency remains relatively unknown to the majority of the Danish population, it is now gaining increasing support from local shops thanks to a social experiment in the capital city.

24 year old Jack Nikogosian, also known as ‘Bitcoin Jack’, has pledged to refrain from cash and credit cards and live on bitcoins for a month in an attempt to see, how far the cryptocurrency will get him.

He is now planning to perform Denmark’s first bitcoin pub crawl, and the support from the local bars and shops has been overwhelming.

Just three weeks ago, 35 shops accepted bitcoin in Denmark according to the open source bitcoin-directory Coinmap. Now that number has increased by 37 percent to 48 shops, and more are in the talks of joining.

»I was bored living on bitcoins with only few things to do,« says Jack Nikogosian to the Danish tech site Version2.

»So then I convinced the bars to sign up for bitcoin, so I could go out with my friends. I didn’t plan to do a pub crawl originally, but then so many of the bars chose to join that it was obvious,« says Jack, who also works as account manager at the Danish bitcoin company Coinify.

From one to seven bitcoin-bars in a week

One group of shops that has taken a particular liking to bitcoin are the local bars. There used to be only one bar in Copenhagen, where you could trade bitcoins for beer but now six additional bars have joined the group of bitcoin-friendly venues. All of them have signed up in order to be part of Jack’s social experiment and enjoy the attention from the bitcoin-community.

At the traditional Irish The Dubliner located in the centre of Copenhagen customers can not only pay for their Guinness in bitcoin but also trade their local currency to cryptocurrency by using the pub’s bitcoin ATM - the ‘BTM’.

This is also where ‘Bitcoin Jack’ plans to start his bitcoin pub crawl. Starting on Friday 20 March local bitcoin-users and interested will visit each bitcoin-bar in Copenhagen for a round of drinks paid for with the cryptocurrency.

Apart from going to bars in Copenhagen, it is now also possible to get a haircut, a tattoo and a taste of the trending paleo diet at local restaurant Palæo by using bitcoin. Additionally bitcoin can be used to buy fast food through the online takeaway service Hungry.dk, where the cryptocurrency already accounts for one percent of the food being sold there.