Something in the world of floating have you stumped?
Show Highlights
Graham and Ashkahn share their experiences on accepting Bitcoin at Float On… including what it was like to have a Bitcoin ATM located in a 24 hour facility.
Listen to Just the Audio
Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)
Graham: And today’s question is: “What are you thoughts about taking cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, et cetera?” I don’t know if that was the name of a cryptocurrency, just … an et cetera there.
Ashkahn: It’s based on dot systems.
Graham: Dot chain as a form of fame. What do we think about taking cryptocurrencies as payment?
Ashkahn: I like it.
Graham: I like it, too.
Ashkahn: Okay.
Graham: Done. Yeah, you should do it.
All right, next question is-
Ashkahn: So, they’re cool. I like cryptocurrencies. I like the concept.
Graham: I’ve taken pies as payment too. I like taking anything-
Ashkahn: Yeah, we’re taking note of anything as payment. Maybe we should … we won’t necessarily get into bartering everything right now.
Graham: No, I was just saying the reason that I like cryptocurrencies is because I do like taking pretty much anything as a form of payment.
Ashkahn: Yeah.
The cryptocurrencies specifically, we’ve never accepted anything other than Bitcoin … yet.
Graham: I don’t think we’ve ever been asked.
Ashkahn: Yeah. Yeah. It’s interesting.
It’s one of those things where like, people don’t tend to ask too much. It’s like you kind of put it out there that you accept it and then people come out of the woodwork as being: “Oh, sweet. I can pay with this thing.” You know? Otherwise, people would just be wandering around asking every business like: “Hey, you guys accept Litecoin?” Like getting told “No!” like 99 of a 100 times.
Graham: You wouldn’t do that?
Ashkahn: So, yeah, we’ve only been accepting Bitcoin, but we have been accepting Bitcoin for-
Graham: Years.
Ashkahn: Yeah. Several years now. Like three, four years. Something like that. And in fact, we had Oregon’s first Bitcoin ATM in our lobby for a period of time, which was its own crazy adventure.
Yeah. It wasn’t really related to our shop. It was just an independent ATM that was specifically made for like buying and selling Bitcoin and transferring Bitcoin between wallets. And they put it in our shop because we’re open 24 hours a day, so it was nice to have it accessible and because we like Bitcoin and wanted to support it.
Graham: … which ended up being awesome on a lot of levels.
Ashkahn: Yeah. It ended up being terrible on a lot of levels.
Graham: Really like one main level.
Ashkahn: One main level.
Graham: Yeah.
It was also like we got … people who did use Bitcoin were totally stoked that we had that there.
Ashkahn: Yeah.
Graham: We got a lot of questions about it and even attention from people.
Ashkahn: Sure.
Graham: … being like, “What is this?” Is this come kind of monetary arcade game you got in here?
Ashkahn: We got some press from it too, like, where there’s a few articles.
Graham: Yeah, at least two articles specifically who contacted us because we had a Bitcoin. Then we’re like: “Wait. What are you guys doing here?”
Ashkahn: “What is this place?”
Graham: It’s just crazy!
Ashkahn: The downside was that we were, I mean people were coming in to use this thing who were coming in to use an ATM and were not really interested in floating or anything like that.
Graham: And 19 out of 20 of those people were totally fine, you know, coming in, everything’s okay. Like 95% interaction with our Bitcoin machine I feel like was completely fine.
Ashkahn: Yeah. And 1 out of 20 people were like clearly using Bitcoin in some sort of underground black market internet situation and they like look the part and they are like-
Graham: Human trafficking or like I don’t even know. They come in. It’s like, smell a little odd, perhaps. They don’t make eye contact, like, hoodie and sunglasses. They have their own mini laptop they’re bringing up and like typing it in next to the ATM.
Ashkahn: I wouldn’t even say … the big problem specifically for us was that this Bitcoin ATM just had the worst user interface and was constantly having problems. People would come in to use it and they’d be standing there for 30 minutes trying to get it to work. They’d be looking at us like: “Hey, when this screen comes up, which of these buttons are we …?” I’m like “I have no idea. I don’t know. I don’t know how this machine works.” Sometimes it was in the middle of transitions and they were just blocking up space … Anyway, it got to the point where we were like: “Okay, we need to get this Bitcoin ATM out of our shop.”
To me it’s kind of like, the way we’re supporting Bitcoin is by accepting it as a business.
Graham: Mmm hmm.
Ashkahn: And that’s a stronger stance than having some random ATM in our lobby, in my opinion. So we still accept Bitcoin and I still like to support Bitcoin in that way. We just don’t have a Bitcoin ATM in our lobby anymore.
Graham: And if someone asked and it wasn’t too crazy to set up, I would happily support other blockchain currencies as well.
Ashkahn: Sure.
Graham: Like Ethereum and Litecoin.
Ashkahn: I think we can. Our wallet accepts that. I don’t think it’d be that hard to set up.
Graham: I think we probably do accept them; it’s just that we haven’t really had the incentive to get that out there and push it or anything like that.
Ashkahn: The other thing you need to know about accepting these is that people just need to, your staff needs to be comfortable in terms of knowing how to do it. Luckily, that’s gotten a lot easier nowadays. If you’re willing to go with one of the online wallets and … this conversation’s about security and stuff around those, but if you’re willing to ignore those for a second and use one of these online wallets-
Graham: If you’re willing to be a patsy.
Ashkahn: Then often there’s all sorts of solutions in terms of just printing out a QR code or having a number you can give to someone or telling them a certain email or even having a page on your website that has kind of a pre-populated QR code or something like that, that you can just really easily hand someone when they come in. So, you know, people will probably book without paying and deal with this when they come into your shop to actually float … is kind of the easiest way I’ve found to do it. But if you put in a little bit of effort in the first place, you can usually generate something from your wallet that’ll make it easy for your staff to just accept these. And then you would just … when they come into float, you would just do the exchange rate at that point. Yeah, you do the cost of your float and charge them that day’s rate for the exchange rate between that and what the Bitcoin monetary value is.
Graham: Yup. And in the helm we just have that set up as another form of accepted currency, which you can do in a lot of your scheduling systems too. So we just add a little Bitcoin area where they enter in the value that they got from that.
Ashkahn: Yeah.
Graham: And that’s about it. Do it. I say … “Wait for something to go wrong before you correct” is also one of our general philosophies, right? So, you know, when we come up with these crazy ideas, our first instinct is always, well, let’s try it out and see what happens. In this case, it’s been going on for years with nothing going bad, so I highly encourage you to do it at your own center.
Ashkahn: Yeah, definitely.
Graham: And I think that’s it. Do you have anything else you want to say?
Ashkahn: Not really, I mean, other than I guess like the general, you might lose that money. It might just drop to a very low value.
Graham: Sure. Someone comes in with $20,000 and drops down to 200 the next day.
Ashkahn: Or the opposite could happen. Ours went up in value. So from the time that people paid us … When we had the ATM, we were doing the most transactions because I think it was so in people’s face that we were accepting Bitcoin. Since that time, the price went up before we sold it. So that was nice. And yeah, I guess there’s … you have to figure out taxes in terms of Bitcoin if you really want to do anything properly.
Graham: Oh yeah. And this is not a tax podcast.
Ashkahn: Yeah, so … You should ask someone about that and how it’s supposed to happen.
Graham: What do they call them again? Account-ant? Accountaunt?
Ashkahn: Yeah, something like that.
Graham: Your aunt. Ask your aunt about it.
All right, everyone. Thanks for tuning it and we’ll talk to you tomorrow.
Ashkahn: Right.
Graham: Oh, and … Send us questions too. Go to … what was our website?
Ashkahn: floattanksolutions.com/podcast
Recent Podcast Episodes
When is it Time to Open a Second Float Center? – DSP 115
Okay, so… Float On only has one location (not counting Float On Hong Kong) and there’s certainly a reason for that. Graham and Ashkahn have toyed with the idea of opening up another center multiple times throughout the years but something else always came up. As they’ve met more people in the industry, they’ve seen some of the pitfalls and successes from people opening additional locations, franchises and whatever else. They share their thoughts on when they think it’d be best to open and why they say to wait a little bit.
Choosing the Hours to Staff Your Float Center – DSP 114
How do you figure out how many people to hire? What’s the ideal hours for a float employee to work? Is there such a thing as too many hours? Too few?
Graham and Ashkahn share their insights with staffing Float On and what their staff looks like to cover all their shifts running a six tank, 24 hour float center.
Tips for Creating an Inviting Float Center Lobby – DSP 113
Not all of us are interior designers, but we all want to have a space that is welcoming to our customers.
Graham and Ashkahn definitely have an eye for this, especially after visiting so many float centers. They share some of their favorite designs they’ve seen, as well as common tactics to help make your center comfy and inviting without necessarily breaking the bank on furniture. They also share some of their pipe dreams for their ideal designs that never came to be.
The Weight of a Gallon of Saltwater – DSP 112
When Graham and Ashkahn get to definitively answer a question, it’s like Christmas. Birds sing and the guys bust out their “Answering a question definitively” dance, which has the added side effect of better crop yields during the coming harvest. It’s an exciting time.
There’s a very straightforward mathematical equation for measuring the weight of salt water based on specific gravity, which is excellent. And useful!
Also, whoever wrote this question needs to contact Graham and Ashkahn ASAP!
Tips on Structuring Your Service Menu – DSP 111
There’s a lot of nuance to how you structure your service menu that can have a significant impact on how your customers spend their money. The size of prices, how they’re ordered or arranged, what price you put first on the menu, etc. all make a difference. Given all these small details, it can seem daunting and make some business owners unsure of where to start or who’s advice to take.
Fortunately, Graham and Ashkahn have been at this for a long time and really dig marketing psychology, so they have lots of advice, tips and even some of the psychology behind why we do the things we do.
Latest Blog Posts
Slowing Down, Letting Go, and Stepping Up to iFloat
My intention for this first blog post is to give you some background into my life, and how and why I ended up running a float center, and teaching courses about metaprogramming in float centers. For as far back as I can remember, I have been fascinated with exploring...
We’ll All Float On
This is the introduction that I wrote for the Portland Float Conference program. I wanted to repost it here, so that all of my zany predictions for the future of floating could be recorded for all time. It also seemed like a good piece to kick off this month's topic...
The First Post (in which the nature of the project is revealed)
There is not enough content out there about float tanks. There is certainly not enough for those of us that are actively running, or trying to start, a center. Float Tank Solutions was launched in an attempt to crush this problem. We've already put up a good amount of...
