It’s Friday, May 22, 2020, and two pizza pies cost $45.90 at Stromboli's, across from my apartment in New York City. But 10 years ago, in Florida, two pies from Papa John’s cost Laszlo Hanyecz about $41—or 10,000 bitcoins, which is how he paid. And how Bitcoin Pizza Day was born.
Last month, the owners of the New York Stock Exchange quietly bought a domain name for a made up word. The misspelled wordplay belongs to startup Bakkt—pronounced ‘backed’—which had been in the works for months. Bakkt introduced itself to the world Friday as a digital asset ecosystem hoping to make cryptocurrency mainstream for consumers and merchants. That’s the goal of many a crypto company, but this time it might be more than just talk. Bakkt will launch with an impressive global partner, Starbucks. “As the flagship retailer, Starbucks will play a pivotal role in developing practical, trusted and regulated applications for consumers to convert their digital assets into US dollars…
One thing’s for sure: Starbucks knows how to get paid. It makes sense that company leadership is keeping close eyeballs on the latest, greatest ways for consumers to pay for things. Presently, this means some kind of smartphone integration, whether it’s ApplePay or Starbucks’ own mobile payment application. But the future is much more interesting than the present. In an appearance on Fox Business, Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz expounded the company’s street cred as a payments innovator, then gave a strong tease that Starbucks might—just might—implement its own proprietary cryptocurrency in the future. Schutz suggested that the company would integrate this new currency into the Starbucks payments app that its…
Howard Schultz, founder and executive chairman of Starbucks, made blockchain waves over the weekend by sounding off against bitcoin. It happened during the Starbucks Q1 2018 earnings call, attended by investors, analysts, and journalists alike. Though Schultz clearly explained that Starbucks is not presently pursuing any bitcoin- or cryptocurrency-related initiatives, the company is deeply aware of these emergent payment technologies. You can’t bring up cryptocurrency in the public forum without coming out as for bitcoin or against, and the Frappucino King is deeply skeptical. “I don’t believe that bitcoin is going to be a currency today or in the future,” Schultz said. Yet he’s bullish enough on the crypto space…
