You can now buy vintage clothes with the newest currency in downtown Athens.

Dynamite Clothing, at 143 N. Jackson St., started accepting bitcoins this year.

The digital currency made headlines last year for its skyrocketing values - at one point a single "coin" hit $1,200 in November - and ties to online black markets. But Dynamite Clothing owner Lori Paluck is betting it'll move more mainstream, and she wants her shop to be ready for it.

"It's just a new option for people to use," Paluck said.

The process is simple, Paluck and her shop manager and fellow bitcoin advocate Rachel Barnes said: Convert some U.S. currency to bitcoins to store in a digital wallet. Transferring money, or buying goods from Dynamite Clothing, is a matter of scanning a QR code. Barnes said stories of other brick-and-mortar stores seeing sales skyrocket - and her own boyfriend's advocacy for the new currency - spurred adding the service. It will still take U.S. dollars as well.

They hope to even capitalize on Atlanta bitcoin tourists, or those enamored enough by the currency to travel for the sole purpose of using it in a physical shop.

"It started as something everyone was skeptical about," Paluck said. "Now, people are actually talking about it."

The two downplayed any criticism of the currency. Apple recently dropped the last bitcoin wallet app from its iOS app store, but the web browser still allows bitcoin use, Barnes wrote in an email. For any fluctuations in the currency's value - since it's $1,200-plus high, it had fallen to about $725 as of Friday afternoon - Barnes said the shop has the option to immediately convert bitcoin purchases into cash. But both were confident it would remain strong and viable going into the future, in part because of it's direct seller-buyer nature. They also predicted that, in this more digital world, it would continue to move forward, especially as people's initial trepidations evaporate.

"When eBay first started, everyone was afraid to use it," Barnes said.

Follow business and government reporter Nick Coltrain at http://www.facebook.com/NickColtrainABH or on Twitter @NColtrain.