The Pembury Tavern, a battered-looking pub on a crossroads in Hackney, is enjoying a new lease of life.Once an old-fashioned boozer, it now sells thin-crust pizzas and obscure beers — Brentwood S-Lime, Milton Marcus Aurelius and White Horse Blowing Stone — to a young, tech-savvy crowd, many of whom work in nearby Tech City, the area of east London David Cameron hopes will be a rival to Silicon Valley.

Where grizzled Eastenders used to brood over pints, bearded media workers now tap away on Apple laptops, taking advantage of free wi-fi.

The pub’s former patrons would have been baffled at the way the newcomers buy a drink. The Pembury is one of the few places in Britain that accepts bitcoins — a virtual currency that