Hungry.dk, a Danish online food takeaway portal which handles orders from over 1,500 restaurants in Denmark, accepts bitcoin (BTC) as payment. The takeaway portal had been accepting BTC since 2014, however, it decided to temporarily stop taking the cryptocurrency last year due to very long transaction processing times.
One of Hungry.dk’s representatives told the Bitcoinist:
We have accepted bitcoins as a payment method for quite some time. We decided to remove the feature temporarily last year though because the average transaction time took too long, and the experience wasn’t the best.
However, the representative said that the issues have now been resolved, and that Hungry.dk has added the BTC payment option again. So now customers can pay for food items from the portal’s over 1,500 restaurants with the flagship cryptocurrency.
Over 13,000 Venues Worldwide Now Accept Bitcoin
Currently, there are over 13,000 venues worldwide that accept BTC payments, according to research by blockchain analyst, Larry Cermak. Out of the 13,000 merchants that have been placed in specific categories (about half the total), the largest number of venues that take bitcoin are general shopping stores (35.1%). In second place, percentage wise, are ATMs – as 13.5% of them globally take BTC. Meanwhile, in third place are lodging services, with 9.7% of them worldwide that accept bitcoin.
Other notable findings from the research show that about 52% of bitcoin accepting venues began taking digital currency between 2013-2015. The report also reveals that most merchants started accepting BTC in 2014, but then due to slow activity, significantly more merchants did not begin taking bitcoin until 2017 and 2018.
Interestingly, “a monthly breakdown” of when new merchants were added indicates that there is a correlation between BTC’s volatility and the number of venues that began taking bitcoin as payment. When not considering volatility in the present bear market, the (positive) correlation begins to get stronger.
Slovenia, Czeck Republic Leading BTC Accepting Venues
According to Cermak:
[The strong correlation between increasing BTC acceptance rates and positive price movements] indicates that as bitcoin’s price increases, more merchants will start accepting bitcoin as payment; perhaps because an increase in price indicates larger demand and therefore a higher likelihood that someone will actually pay with bitcoin.
When examining the geographical distribution, the US accounts for around 27% of all BTC-accepting venues. Other places around the world that have a relatively large number of merchants that take bitcoin include Brazil, Spain, Germany, Canada, and Italy – according to the research data.
Looking at the numbers in terms of population shows that the US falls to 21st place as there are only 8.7 venues per million people in the country that take BTC. Notably, the two leading nations in bitcoin-accepting venues per capita are Slovenia at 41.6 per million and Czech Republic at 32.6.
