First Crypto Sushi in Lima

Many years ago,I heard about Bitcoin, which I believe was the first digital currency to see light, as a consumer who regularly paid with cash and plastic, crypto seemed like a nice addition but it was not frictionless as other digital alternatives like PayPal and Venmo. Forward 2022 I downloaded Coinbase to accept a small amount of Ethereum to split lunch with a friend who had a short layover in Peru; besides adding some novelty, I figured a small amount of Ethereum could eventually exchanged into soles to be used anywhere, then I started wondering if there could be more people using crypto? And if so, where could they use it to buy sushi at Kaiyo Rolls? Here is my experience selling sushi online with crypto.

Before I added Kaiyo Rolls to coinmap.org, there were only three restaurants in Lima that accepted crypto. A quick search turned out the following restaurants accepted crypto in Lima:

Coinmap crypto restaurants in Lima
Restaurants Accepting Crypto in Lima – Map by Coinmap.org

As it turns out you can’t do much digital currencies without exchanging to local currency first, so to facilitate payments I added Coinbase Commerce on our site using their WordPress plugin. Also Its wallet app also enables very fast cross border payments by enabling QR codes for checkout as well as providing an ETH hash:

Coinbase Commerce QR Hash Checkout for crypto
Coinbase Commerce Checkout on Kaiyo.pe

It has been more than a month since our first sale using Ethereum, and so far we have only received one online order since the implementation. I wonder if crypto currency will ever move beyond mere speculation on trading platforms… or maybe central banks should develop a digital currency that makes trading faster and cheaper… what do you think?

Sushi boat at Kaiyo Rolls
Sushi Boat for Two at Kaiyō Rolls Lima

In the meantime here is a sushi boat for two for 89 soles or roughly 0.00016 ETH.

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