Why Crypto Restaurants Were Destined To Fail

Bored & Hungry is a restaurant in Long Beach, California that opened just this past April. It's a heavily NFT-themed restaurant that accepted cryptocurrency as payment for food. Note the past tense when I said "accepted." Because now it's changed its menu to reflect the fact that it now only accepts boring old fiat money for its array of burgers and fries, reports The LA Times. I guess the future is not now, after all.

Cryptocurrency is currently in an unstable state of affairs, with the titan of the bunch, Bitcoin, possibly headed to $13,000 per coin, according to CNBC (as of this writing, it's around $21,000 per). While that's certainly no small potatoes, its price was at over $68,000 at its peak last November. (NextAdvisor has a good timeline of its ups and downs.)

The LA Times discovered that most customers just came because they earnestly liked the burgers and weren't particularly interested in the cryptocurrency gimmick. Bored & Hungry used to accept Bitcoin-alternative currencies ethereum and apecoin, but using that as payment appeared to be a pain in the ass (I'm guessing a lot of futile button mashing on multiple digital devices), and it largely went ignored by everyone.

Plus, one customer noted that considering the crypto market cash, nobody wants to spend their digital money. If the market bounces back, which I'm guessing it will, at least to an extent, why bother spending it when it could recover something in value? Maybe these people are just saving up for more burgers!

But honestly, I'm thinking it's really more along the lines of being more trouble than it's worth. Handing over some cash or inserting a plastic card manually into a device seems, I don't know, okay? Especially with a currency that might only be worth a few pennies in five minutes (you should see the market swings per minute, it's wild). Plus, you know, we've not particularly fans of crypto-based restaurants anyway; most of the crew at The Takeout has expressed skepticism at its culture and whether or not it'll last long.

As fewer people express optimism with this unappealing method of transaction (at least to the masses), I think we'll see a pullback on the excitement with restaurants with crypto affiliations. You know why? Because it wasn't a sound way to run a business to begin with. I just want my goddamn burger. I'm guessing the rest of you just want yours too.