My son is 7 and he earns $10 a week for doing his chores. He loves putting each weathered bill in his cute Velcro X-Men wallet. I wanted to teach him about money and innovation, so what could be more fun for a kid than trying out a highly volatile, quasi-legal, experimental currency system? I told him: “Kevin,” (not his real name, his real name is Sam), ”To teach you about technology, I’m going to pay you your allowance in Bitcoins instead of dollars.”Are they like gold coins or something?”They are digital currency based on crypto-hash tags that are completely anonymous and digital.” “Can I put them in my wallet?”They only exist in computers on hard drives, you’ll see, it’ll be fun.” So we sat down at the computer to get some Bitcoins. It only took me about 3 hours of failed attempts until I landed on a site called Bitstamp where I could wire money into an account and buy Bitcoins. My son had wandered off so I called him over. “Kevin, come over here.

The good news is that you now have 0.123 bitcoins. The bad news is that in the time it took to get them, their value has gone down, so your $10 is now worth about $8.” Before my son could respond, we heard the happy sound of the ice cream truck’s bell ringing from the street. He ran outside to say hi to the driver and picked out an ice cream sandwich (his favorite). “Can I pay you in bitcoins?” “They are a new special kind of money that my dad gave me.” “I’m sorry son, I don’t know what those are, we just take dollars. I’m going to have to ask for that ice cream sandwich back.” The look on my son’s face was heart-breaking, like that of a young child whose ice cream had been taken away. I’ve told you many times on this blog that entrepreneurs need to be thick-skinned, even cold-hearted, to persevere. This was one of those moments. “This sucks Dad,” my son said, his face growing darker.”Now I know why Mom hates you and goes on trips alone with your business partner.”

“Look Kevin, being an innovator means working through some tough stuff. Let’s try to go to a bigger store to spend your bitcoins.” So we headed to Target. They are known for being a retail innovator and probably have an advanced POS/commerce system. My Son picked out a Lego set.We went up to the cashier to ring things up and I asked if they accepted bitcoins. “Target does not accept those, I don’t know what you are talking about.” My son’s face grew sad again, but then the cashier lowered her voice and leaned forward. buy lego usb hub“But we have an employee named Dex in Aisle 3 who is a bit of an anarchist hacker, he might be able to help you.”buy lego ice cube tray Intrigued, we made our way over to Aisle 3, where a young employee with hair falling over his eyes was busy texting.buy lego ev3 gyro sensor

“We were interested in buying something with Bitcoins, do you know anything about that? The guy looked up from his Snapchat, “Follow me.” He took us through a door in the back of the store, and into a cramped closet-like area. He took out his phone and plugged in some kind of adapter device. “This baby provides 256 key encryption that even the NSA can’t hack and it hops across cellular networks to avoid detection.” He beamed with pride. “This is the same technique used by the Somali branch of Al Queda.”lego shop bordeaux He had me log into my bitcoin account on my phone and showed me how to attached the right keys  and send them to his account to transfer the money. lego shop dernancourtHe looked at his phone to confirm the receipt.buy lego hockey

He handed my son the lego box, tearing off the bar code sticker. “Just hold this under your coat as you walk out.” I wondered if he had the authority to sell this merchandise on behalf of Target, but figured that he was probably part of some cutting edge “e-Labs” team and could go around the usual systems. On our way home, I was proud about how things had turned out. “See Kevin,” I said. “Wasn’t it cool how we used our digital money to buy that? “Why did we have to go to that closet?” he asked. Kids are so funny. As we pulled up to the house, I noticed 2 black sedans and an SUV parked in front of it. A bunch of guys in windbreakers with the big yellow “FBI” on them stood in front of the door and blocked our way. One of them grabbed my son and took the Lego box from Target out of his hands. “Yup, looks like we got our guy,” he said. They shoved me to ground and one put his foot on the side of my face while they started questioning my son.

The details of what happened next aren’t really relevant. Anyway, that was my experience using bitcoins for a child’s allowance. To some extent, it appears that they may not be ready for mainstream use, but the promise is clear. And I think the experience was great for my son. I have more thoughts about how investment opportunities in the bitcoin ecosystem, but I need to run to go pick up my son from the regional FBI office in Denver, I think they should be done with their questioning by now.Last week, Cointelegraph reported Red Bull’s introduction of a Bitcoin-only Red Bull vending machine at Hackers Congress in Prague. Martijn Wismeijer, representative of General Bytes, the manufacturer of the machine, tells us about manufacturing Bitcoin ATMs, 3D printing process and future collaborations. "By standardizing on our own Bitcoin computer we can rapidly create new applications using the tools we already have. We like to see it as LEGO for Bitcoin applications."

The Red Bull’s Bitcoin-only vending machine was originally manufactured by the Red Bull development team in Thailand. Upon its completion, the machine was sent to a Bitcoin ATM manufacturer - General Bytes and Prague-based 3D printing company Makers Lab for additional modification. Essentially, Red Bull required the integration of a Bitcoin payment system that would allow the vending machine to accept digital currency payments via contactless NFC payment method. With focus set on user experience and flexibility, General Bytes hoped to make Bitcoin transactions easier than cash. “Users do not need to know anything about Bitcoin or crypto to get a can of RedBull. Instead, they just have to swipe their wallet card. “We wanted to streamline the purchase process and make it easier to use than cash,” explained General Bytes marketing manager Martijn Wismeijer. To do this, the General Bytes team first removed the cash acceptor on the original Red Bull vending machine, which took up a significant amount of internal space.

Considering the difficulty of creating custom fit replacement cover manually, General Bytes partnered with Makerslab to 3D print the cover for the Bitcoin acceptor with necessary modification for various compartments. “Removing the cash acceptor left us with this huge hole in the vending machine so the designers at Makerslab created a 3D-printed replacement cover for the coin acceptor with mounting holes for status LEDs and NFC wallet reader,” Wismeijer added. Red Bull and General Bytes believed that both the manufacturing process and distribution of the Red Bull Bitcoin vending machine came to life because programmers, hardware hackers, 3D makers and artists came together to create the one and only Red Bull signature Bitcoin vending machine. One unique aspect of the machine is the sophistication of the General Bytes Bitcoin computer, which was integrated into the Red Bull machine for payment processing. Wismeijer explains that the identical software and system implemented into its cryptocurrency ATMs powered the Red Bull machine, which made the entire payment process and experience smooth and simple.

The General Bytes cryptocurrency ATM was also tested and utilized by Andrej Babiš, Finance Minister of the Czech Republic since 2014, who was instructed by Bitcoin expert Andreas Antonopoulos during the process of purchasing Bitcoins. Cointelegraph: Does General Bytes plan to collaborate with other huge companies in the future? : We certainly hope to do more partnerships with big brands and can basically create anything they want. When a client approaches us and wants to do something new or crazy, we get together and make it happen. Big brands usually have the social-media muscle that will help increase Bitcoin adoption and their marketing departments are usually great to work with. We think we will see many novel applications for Bitcoin and the Blockchain technology now the tools are here. CT: Aren't Bitcoin ATM's becoming less relevant? MW: Some people say Bitcoin ATM's and vending machines will become less relevant because of availability of Bitcoin debit cards.