31 May 2014 / The Villager – U.S. dollars are no longer necessary to acquire food, shelter and drink in the East Village and Lower East Side.
Online restaurant and entertainment guide Yelp recently joined a growing number of businesses now recognizing the increased use of Bitcoin. The Web site will now list businesses that accept the digital currency, which is gaining increasing interest from tech-savvy New Yorkers.
“We’re constantly thinking about how to make our business attributes more useful for consumers and businesses,” reads a statement posted April 28 on Yelp’s official blog.
An East Village real estate agent, lawyer and neighborhood wine bar are also helping increase the local prominence of the 5-year-old concept among residents. True believers in Bitcoin’s future within the local community meanwhile have ambitions to transform far more than the medium through which goods are bought and sold.
“Crypto-currency — whatever you want to call it — is going to be around,” said attorney Jonathan Lefkowitz, who has accepted several Bitcoin payments from clients. “It has value and it’s easy to get paid.”
Confidence in Bitcoins’ increasing value versus the U.S. dollar inspires new users of the currency, which allows funds to be exchanged anonymously with a few taps of a smartphone or computer keyboard.
Avoiding charges associated with credit card and check payments also helps the bottom line, according to Andrew Hanna, an East Villager whose firm, Bond New York Real Estate, began accepting the digital currency earlier this year.
“There have been a few transactions,” he reported….. Read more
http://thevillager.com/2014/05/29/more-businesses-using-bitcoin/
