Due to the recent bitcoin market fall, a restaurant with a crypto motif no longer accepts cryptocurrency payments. The eatery launched in April. Early this year, the California eatery Bored & Hungry began accepting cryptocurrency in exchange for burgers. It even boasted about being the first eatery to accept payments in Ethereum and Apecoin.
The Los Angeles Times claims that the eatery has ceased taking the risky digital currencies in the wake of the crypto-crash and is now only accepting conventional US cash. It’s unclear how popular paying with cryptocurrency was in the first place, as one diner told the LA Times, adding that people who have the currencies tend to want to hold onto them as an investment, even as those investments plummet. Despite finding a market of people who want to look at pictures of bored apes while they eat.
The Long Beach burger eatery Bored & Hungry didn’t only embrace crypto culture’s look when it originally launched in April. The aspect of digital money was also fully committed. Sure, the walls were plastered in meme allusions to rockets and bulls, and the cups and platters were covered in Bored Apes, the cartoon monkeys that famous people like Paris Hilton and Post Malone have described as six-figure investments. Customers may, however, also use cryptocurrencies to pay for their meals. So to speak, the eatery put its money where its mouth was by accepting bitcoin.
That is no longer the case not even three months later, in the middle of a cryptocurrency crisis that has some investors seeking for the exit. One recent afternoon, when there was a pause in the lunch rush, a cashier was stamping paper bags with the fast-food restaurant’s name as twin menus, displaying the restaurant’s meat-based and vegan selections, respectively, hung over his head.
$9.25 for a smashburger. Frying with pepper: $3.50. A $3.50 cup of soda with an ape motif. Any reference to ethereum or apecoin, the two coins the popup bragged it would be the first to accept as payment, is absent. Owner Andy Nguyen is also absent; he ignored multiple emails enquiring about the change.
However, a staff member who wished to remain anonymous stated that the shop does not take cryptocurrency payments. They refused to specify when the business stopped taking cryptocurrency or whether that choice will someday come back, only saying, “Not today – I don’t know.” Given that both currencies have lost more than 60% of their value since early April and have experienced double-digit intraday volatility, it makes sense that no firm would want to accept them in place of dollars. Utility, though, could also play a role. A staff member at the restaurant’s grand launch told The Times that the cryptocurrency payments were cumbersome and were generally disregarded by patrons.
