“For me to see any benefit, I think it’ll take five years,” he said.

Though he does not yet use bitcoins himself, he thinks cryptocurrency has a future, and he likes jumping on to new possibilities early in the game.

“There’s no risk to us,” he said. “At the end of the day, our bitcoins will be converted into dollars.” That allows him to avoid the volatility of the bitcoin’s value, which fluctuates wildly from day to day.

And then, of course, there’s this: “I appreciate the subversive attitude,” he said. “It tends to push against the mainstream to find new and better ways.”

Dery-Chaffin likes the idea that transaction fees will be low to nonexistent with bitcoins, which means a small business like Chaffin’s will stand to make more of a profit.

In addition to accepting bitcoins at the restaurant, Dery-Chaffin has invested in them. But he didn’t go into it blindly.

“One of the detractions is that it’s politically loaded,” he said. “The founder is completely anonymous, and that terrifies people, and (that) made me search other forms of virtual currency. But no one else has the name recognition, which is important in valuation.”