Two businesses in Pordenone started accepting payments in cryptocurrency to keep pace with technologies and to attract foreign bitcoin users.

Safarà Editore is the first publishing house in the world to sell books for bitcoins, says the local news outlet Messaggero Veneto. It is a small independent entity in business since 2007, publishing adult and children novels, horror stories, essays and comic books. It is located in the centre of Pordenone, a town with 50 thousand population in Friuli Venezia Giulia, the north-eastern part of Italy.

Safarà also operates a shop of comic books, board games and rarities located in the ground floor, below the rooms of the publishing house. The place is quite popular among the locals. And bitcoin payments have already taken place in the shop – apparently, the idea of buying paper books with electronic currency does not seem strange to the customers. There is one more option for bitcoin enthusiasts: without leaving the building, they can spend the rest of their bitcoins in the Rico’s sandwich bar.

Bitcoin payments received by Safarà and Rico’s are processed by Inbitcoin, a start-up located in Trento, also in Northern Italy, 100 miles away from Pordenone. The owner of Inbitcoin, Marco Amadori, is a cryptocurrency enthusiast who has been living in Pordenone for five years and managed to persuade local businesses to start accepting bitcoins. Amadori says he did it “to ignite a spark in the town he loved.” He says, Pordenone needs bitcoin because it is a technological innovation, not just money. Besides, he believes that bitcoin can have a tourist appeal, attracting to Pordenone cryptocurrency users from Germany and Nordic countries where bitcoin is more common than in Italy.

Alexey Tereshchenko