I feel to have arrived at a point where I could get satisfaction. I have the wallet I need, some coins(*) in it, I understood how to move them.
Finally, I thought, it's time to do the easiest thing someone could do with money: spending it.
An ice-cream, a cup of coffee, a bottle of water.
I don't mind what, I would like to do the simple gesture to give money for receiving something back, an ancient and daily action that since thousands of years characterizes our human civilization.

To tell the truth, I know my tormented country, once undisputed protagonist of the mediterranean commercial traffic, is at the moment on the periphery of the crypto world. So getting here an ice-cream using cryptos seems to be, among the easiest things to do, a very hard endeavour.

I see many of the crypto lovers like to hold coins, to think of them as an investment. I don't mind it, my immediate and deep interest in cryptocurrency has a simpler push: to find a bridge to escape from hyperinflation, to discover an alternative way to buy currency without facing the restrictions imposed by old fashioned authorities. And to use that money.

But, on the verge of starting, I feel to be already in a dead-end street. So soon!

Let me explain. The place I dreamt, where I could enter and pay in crypto, it doesn't exist here. I already said I never noticed crypto currency acceptance in any lebanese shop I visited in my life, but I was thinking I could find some hidden pioneering location through an online research.
But no, sadly no. I could not find even one place in Beirut that sells food or staff for cryptos, not even one!

Probably this could depend on the mistrust of the sellers and on the suspicion of the buyers, or in general on the ignorance of the people about this new technology.
I will investigate all this in the future when I'll start to interview people around me.
But the mother of all reasons is connected to the fact that also an innovative shop has to face that lebanese central bank forbids in some way the use of cryptos and the government discourages their adoption by saying "not safe". Basically in Lebanon even if you are free to hold and trade cryptos, you can pay services only using the recognized currencies (Lebanese Lira and US Dollar). That seems to be the problem.

So, my ice cream? Well, I could hold my cryptos and change them from time to time in one of the two official currencies and with that money go finally to take my ice-cream.

But how?

I was not able to discover the existence of a single ATM. No even in the airport. I have seen pictures of ATMs all over the world, I know they are not cheap to use but I'd like so much one to be here.

The alternative could be to sell my crypto in some physical exchanging places actually existing. I could go there, say hello, give them my Identity Card, get the money and go to the ice-cream parlour. Yes, it's something that can work. Even if honestly I don't like it very much. Maybe one day I discover there is nothing to worry, probably it's also a chance for knowing interesting people. But, at the moment, I feel it's not so practical, not so comfortable. Moreover I would like to preserve my privacy.

So I was thinking something different, I could try to sign up for a trusted exchange and connect it to a debit/credit card. The problem is that I expect the lebanese banks, as usual, will be able block this kind of transactions the same way they don't allow paypal. What an irony! I wanted cryptos to escape the problems of the lebanese banks but I would need to connect with them again, if it was possible.
A solution to this would be to get and use a card from abroad. But no chance.

Am I disappointed? Not really, not yet. Since the beginning I knew it has to be a challenging journey.
Anyway I promise to myself, I don't know when, I don't know where, I don't know how, but I'll eat an ice-cream paying with cryptos. And that day I'll write and I'll post here a report. For sure!

And, by the way, I'll take a chocolate & pistachio one. 😊

Thank you for reading ❤️

(*) About this I kindly want to thank weavme.