“The point is to get people to think about bitcoin, not spend it. I don’t think it’s good for that. It’s not meant to be used like cash,” Jeremy Gardner, founder of Ausum Ventures, advised me.“Satoshi created a decentralized store of value,” probably encapsulates his thesis that bitcoin is best unspent — better to hoard it like gold. To Gardner, using it as a currency is not only impractical. It is counterintuitive.Well, I’m trying it anyway.After all, journalist Kashmir Hill experimented with living on bitcoin as early as 2013, so it should be easier now, right? Well, it is and it isn’t. Nearly six years later, I’m discovering that, while bitcoin’s payment infrastructure has advanced, its use as a method of payment, at least in San Francisco, has seemingly regressed.Before reporting to the conference I’m attending here in San Francisco, I had something important to do: I had to pay my respects to the pioneer.Before leaving my home in Nashville to start my experiment, I reached out to Kashmir Hill, a former Forbes-gone-Gizmodo journalist who did this in 2013 (and again in 2014). She graciously took me up on my request to meet up so I could pick her brain and seek advice.Getting to her was my first unbanked transaction. Transportation was a problem in her own experience until she got a bike, and even then, San Francisco’s hilly landscape is unforgiving, so it still wasn’t easy. It’s a way to get around, ...
