Most meant it as a joke, but as I thought about it, I realized the underlying issue was consequential.
My experience underscores how, despite how some might dream, society as a whole is simply not ready for cryptocurrency as an everyday medium of exchange.
Toronto’s Coinberry had proudly announced it had partnered with the Ontario towns of Richmond Hill and Innisfil to allow people to pay their property taxes with crypto.
So, I hired a journalism student to cobble a list of emails from the directory of the Canadian Independent Booksellers Association.
Did they still do that, and if so, would they stock the book of a random guy with no connection to the university? I never heard back on that.
In a small literary market of six million Spanish speakers, retailers are unlikely to even stock my book at all.
It also runs a physical shop with cryptocurrency paraphernalia and was more than happy to stock my book and accept bitcoin for it.
A caveat would be that my lists of retailers included children’s and specialty stores and even a few publishers, businesses that would never stock my book.
At the same time, at least three pointed to a common chokepoint: their point-of-sales and inventory management systems, to which booksellers are uniquely bound.
Bookmanager’s Diane O’Neill told me the company might enable cryptocurrency payments if clients request it: “Squeaky wheel gets the grease, right?” That gave me hope.
Big names have been dabbling in cryptocurrency: Microsoft Corp, Time magazine, AT&T Inc., Amazon.com Inc.’s Twitch, the Coca-Cola Co., Mastercard Inc., Visa Inc., the list goes on.
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