George Plumbing proprietor Clay Silba (left) and Allie Perez, head of marketing and operations, pose for a photo in the company’s “museum” on Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2022. Silba is a third-generation plumber who accepts Bitcoin for his company’s services. The company has been accepting cryptocurrency since 2013. Clay Saliba, the general manager of George Plumbing Co. in San Antonio, surprised customers when he began offering services in exchange for cryptocurrency seven years ago.
With a bachelor’s degree in business from Texas State University, he’d started working for his father a few years earlier, when Bitcoin came on the scene. It was, and remains, the best-known cryptocurrency — the digital money bought and sold without the involvement of governments or their central banks.
Saliba taught himself the ins and outs of crypto — like blockchain, the digital ledgers that record each time the currency changes hands over the internet. He admires how a far-flung community of bitcoin miners use powerful computers to authenticate cryptocurrency transactions.
As a third-generation plumber, Saliba said trade workers are good at adopting new technologies. In his line of work, however, that’s traditionally meant buying cutting-edge gadgets such as the latest cameras for scoping pipes.
“I saw crypto as another way to set us apart from other plumbers and capture a slice of the market that other people weren’t in yet,” he said.
Most of his customers still prefer paying their bills with cash or credit cards, not Bitcoin or Ether, another popular cryptocurrency. But he said many of them “are aware of crypto and understand crypto, though it’s still more of an investment mentality and not about everyday spending.”
Still, he’s not giving up on accepting crypto. He believes the policy will pay off as more customers get comfortable paying for goods and services with digital currency.
Saliba is part of a small but growing community of enthusiasts in San Antonio who use Bitcoin and other digital currencies to buy goods and services — in addition to investing in high-risk crypto. The market value of these currencies is volatile, sometimes swinging wildly up or down.
It can be lonely here for true believers.
San Antonio isn’t New York City , where Democratic Mayor Eric Adams accepted his first paychecks in Bitcoin and Ether. It’s not Miami, where Republican Mayor Francis Suarez is looking to make the city a cryptocurrency haven for tech moguls. He has embraced a government-sanctioned currency called “MiamiCoin” to finance municipal spending.
Cryptocurrencies aren’t widely accepted here yet as a form of payment. But drive around the city and you’ll find 69 cryptocurrency ATMs , mostly in gas stations and convenience stores. Cosa Nostra Pizzeria and other eateries take payment in tokens.
And the University of Texas at San Antonio is teaching undergraduates about the currency, offering a three-credit course this semester called “Cryptocurrency and Bitcoins.”
Tech workers in the city, many of them employed by cybersecurity firms, are hosting and attending meetups to trade tips on investing in the currencies. Getting started
George Plumbing proprietor Clay Silba is a third-generation plumber who accepts Bitcoin for his company’s services. The company has been accepting cryptocurrency since 2013. At a coffee shop in the King William Historic District, Joey Asturias, 24, said he was first exposed to cryptocurrency when he attended Roosevelt High School on the Northeast Side. In 2015, he watched the Sundance Film Festival award-winning movie titled “ Dope ,” centered around a self-described geek growing up in a rough Los Angeles neighborhood. Its characters were obsessed with Bitcoin. It was the first-ever film to sell tickets in cryptocurrency.
“Bitcoin felt inaccessible at the time,” Asturias said.
But less than three years later he found himself talking with classmates in a UTSA cafeteria about investing in Bitcoin — selling at the time for just below $6,000 per token — on the investment app Robinhood.
“It was cool to own it,” he said. “It felt exclusive. There was something about the future that seemed exciting.”
Asturias works as a digital content assistant for the San Antonio Spurs, and he’s a project manager for Wide Awake Creative, a small studio that creates pop-up art shows . He still invests in cryptocurrency and spends his profits on non-fungible tokens, or NFTs — blockchain-created digital files that owners can buy and sell like sports cards.
He buys NFTs on NBA Top Shot, an online marketplace for basketball highlight clips. He also likes purchasing the digital tokens to upgrade his video-game characters and outfit them in the latest virtual clothing. He also pours some of his profits into Decentraland , a 3D […]
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