Buying Wine with Bitcoin at a farm in Chile

flowingman (46)in #banking • 6 years ago (edited)

I've just spent two lovely weeks volunteering on a natural wine farm in western Chile. The farm is located one hour away from the nearest ATM which means withdrawing cash takes some planning. This got me thinking how easy it would be for them to use Cryptocurrencies as well.

The farm is called Mingaco and is situated in a beautiful valley in the village of Chekura. At Mingaco they have been producing wine for generations. They specialise in producing natural red and white wines that require no chemicals or manual watering.

The village has a great 3G mobile data signal and all the inhabitants have smartphones. Instead of driving an hour to withdraw cash they could use a cryptocurrency wallet like Coinomi instead to buy and sell from each other.

They are used to trading with each other directly. For example one local farmer sells her fresh vegetables and another fruit from their trees with cash. Using a cryptocurrencies means they can continue trading this way and not worry about running out of cash.

Natural wine making means each vine doesn’t produce a large quantity of grapes but the grapes themselves are flavoursome. The farm itself is 100% natural which means no chemicals. Even the buildings are natural being made out of adobe (a mixture of mud and straw) which allows them to breathe and perfect for storing wine.

The couple (Daniella and Pablo) that own the farm seemed really excited at the prospect of using cryptocurrencies to bypass the banks and not be so heavily reliant on cash. I helped set them up with the Coinomi wallet and decide to buy a couple of bottles of wine.

I really wish I could have bought a whole box of wine but the space in my rucksack was limited. However now it is straightforward to incorporate a shopping cart similar to Amazon using Bitcoin on any website. This way foreign clients do not have to worry about exchanging their local currency for the seller’s as they both can deal in Bitcoin.

I left the farm feeling knackered having spent the two weeks building paths, weeding vineyards and sleeping in a tent. Both Dani and Pablo eat a vegan diet so I also felt healthier!

I feel that this is another great example of where cryptocurrencies can solve a real world problems. There are still billions of people across the world that don't have a bank accounts, and rely on cash. Because they have smartphones with good internet access they could easily use cryptocurrencies as a way to trade directly with each other securely.

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