I tried to pay with bitcoin at a Mexico City bar—it didn’t go well

Enlarge / Me at Bitcoin Embassy Bar in Mexico City. (credit: Amanda Rohn)

I traveled to Mexico City last week to have a relaxing vacation with my wife-not to find stories for Ars Technica. But our Airbnb apartment happened to be around the corner from a bar called Bitcoin Embassy. How could I not check it out?

The bar included a bitcoin ATM that lets users trade physical cash for bitcoins, and vice versa (there are more than 5,000 bitcoin ATMs like this around the world). Bitcoin Embassy offered a 10% discount if I paid for my tab in bitcoin.

So I inserted a 500 peso note-about $25-into the machine. I downloaded a bitcoin wallet app from Google's Play Store to my Pixel smartphone. It generated an address for receiving the funds and displayed it as a QR code the ATM could scan. A few second later, the ATM spit out a receipt stating "Bitcoin purchased: 0.00245589."

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