“I promise we’re going to tip you more, we’re just out of Bitcoin.”
Dinner as a social construct has become pretty normalized in our society. The system is pretty standard; come in, sit, order, eat, pay, tip, leave. Questions that don’t normally surface are “what if the price of my currency fluctuates so much that I don’t have enough by the end of it”, “what if they don’t accept this kind of currency here”, and the dark and looming “wait what if this just doesn’t work”?
Bitcoin. Popularized in the media as some kind of underground cryptocurrency used by druggies on something called the Silk Road, it’s got a questionable personality attached to it. So why was I sitting in a vegan 50's themed (seriously guys, chrome decor and booths) trying to pay with a bitcoin wallet from a phone?
All in the name of IDEO. The Bits+Blocks Lab (hosted at the Harvard iLab!) kick off day finished off with a “mystery dinner”. Put a group of 25 or so very talented people in one room for an entire day and continuously launch mind-blowing tech potential at them, and then throw in a challenge at the end as the only thing standing between you, and dinner. Talk about motivation, we were literally working for our dinner.
Out come little origami waterbombs, which upon opening contained a QR code. Commence whipping out the scanners and bitcoin wallets.
Nothing happened. As if dinner was going to be that easy. What this QR code did provide, however, was a confusing long string of seemingly random letters and numbers. And, trained by years of formal education, I did what was by now habit when faced with something confusing: I ctrl+c and ctrl+v’d that long string right into Google’s search bar. A rookie mistake.
Actually, potentially a HUGE mistake, and one that could’ve cost my entire team dinner. For any of you well versed in Bitcoin, you probably realized by now that the long string of seemingly random letters and numbers was most likely a private key, and anyone in possession of a private key had the ability to access the funds of whatever wallet the key “unlocked”. In normal terms, this was like me Googling my password for an online bank account. Silly and absolutely unsecure.
Luckily, nobody intercepted our private key and we went through the process of setting up a Circle account to play around with what to do with this curious code. Eventually, we realized that this wasn’t a public address for a wallet, and we opened a Blockchain.Info wallet, went to Import / Export on Blockchain.Info to send money to a Circle wallet, couldn’t send it via a simple scannable QR code but rather had to type in the address (very long and tedious, mind you) and on top of all of that paid 19 cents in transaction fees (0.0001 BTC) for all of the network’s efforts to make that happen. To sum it up, as a teammate put it, “It was a pain in the ass.”
But a very rewarding one, as we were well equipped with $96 (soon to decrease, stay tuned for why) for dinner and headed off to Veggie Galaxy, one of the only places in Cambridge that accepted our newly acquired form of digital currency. Dinner felt almost normal again after we sat down, after the initial query of “Do you guys take Bitcoin?” which was answered with a not-so-confident “Well, they just removed the Bitcoin ATM because I think the company went bankrupt, but you should check the window.” As we sat and munched on our black bean and mushroom 100% vegan burgers followed with coconut cream pie and oreo cheesecake, it occured to me that as Bitcoin was a fluctuating currency, it was very possible that we wouldn’t have enough to pay for our dinner if the price flipped. I was only a little bit right.
The actual transaction with Bitcoin was rather seamless, although we still apologized for using Bitcoin to pay. Our lovely waitress told us that it was actually a piece of cake, and there hadn’t been anyone in a few months that paid in Bitcoin, but it was mostly students (hello, MIT) that had in the past. After a little hiccup with the tip, as we had gone a little bit over than what we were anticipating, we left the restaurant, appetites satiated and almost gleeful in having paid for our very first meals in BTC.
But reflecting on it the next day revealed moments that didn’t really sit as well as my meal did. Dining has such a social element to it, there are norms and constructs that we all as a society have agreed upon. We know when the moments of friction are going to occur, what to expect, when to apologize, when to smile, laugh awkwardly, and take our leave, etc. But with this electronic currency, it was all a little bit off kilter.
I felt uncomfortable with not leaving a physical tip on the table, some of my teammates thought it was weird not knowing if the transaction had gone through. Some parties were just plain confused and some were experiencing technical issues. Everyone apologized for using Bitcoin. We were certainly dealing with a disruptive technology, but it was disruptive in the little rituals that have been ingrained in our systems. It simply felt like using a foreign currency, like we were doing something weird and crazy that we needed to apologize for, implying that it was a bother. But we had to admit, it was kind of cool.
Actually, it was more than just kind of cool. It was really cool. As we spent a few hours thinking about exactly what had happened and what it meant, the ideas started flowing, and the apologies turned into opportunities to really change up the dining experience. What if you could have a menu that would let you order as you went along your meal? What if your menu was right on your table the whole time, on a table or phone? What if eating was kind of like online shopping where you added items to your “cart” as you went? The crazy ideas started coming in, too. What if you could tattoo your QR code on your body and use it to get the check? What if you would pay before you got to the restaurant? What if you could split a meal with a complete stranger?
As the what-ifs flowed and the room filled with “How might we”s on colorful post-its, there was an electric sort of energy going around the room. We weren’t just redefining the dining experience. This wasn’t some large scale remodeling job to throw in some new color schemes and slap on a paint job. No, this redefines the experience of a transaction. And when you stop to think about it, everyday life is a series of transactional moments. At current, we tend to think about transactions whenever we hand over some dead presidents or swipe our plastic. But when you stop to think about it, transactions happen every time we interact with each other, and that’s the opportunity for disruption. Get ready for something exciting.
