Old meets new as Golden Gate casino accepts Bitcoins

If you’ve not got your head around Bitcoin yet then you are in the majority. It seems that no one you speak to in the street can really explain what this virtual currency is all about. You mine data and then earn a coin. Or you can just buy it – over $900 a piece when last we looked. But that doesn’t seem to be deterring the good folks at two Las Vegas casinos that have begun accepting the cyber currency at shops, restaurants and hotels.

The Golden Gate Hotel and Casino, and the D Las Vegas Casino Hotel, which is owned by the same firm, are now processing transactions through BitPay, in a forward thinking move that seems to go hand in hand with one of the most famous establishments of the Nevada city. Unfortunately for the cyber nerds, Bitcoin is not accepted on the gambling floor. You still have to exchange hard cash – US dollars – for chips to play roulette, craps and all the rest.

The Golden Gate, which was built in 1906, is the oldest casino in Las Vegas. It has always been at the forefront of new technology and today is no different. Back in 1907 it had the first telephone in the city and was assigned the number 1. But like the rest of the city’s gambling establishments, it was forced to close its roulette tables and poker tables in 1909 when gambling was outlawed in the state of Nevada. That did not deter the hotel though, and by 1927 it had a large outdoor electric sign, a forerunner of the neon lights that mark out ‘The Strip’ in Vegas for miles around.

Two years later it was opening its doors again to punters playing blackjack and craps, as gambling was legalised in 1929. Since then, the casino has gone from strength to strength, and it remains one of the favourites of the Las Vegas casino circuit.

The D was only opened in 2012 and in many ways the combination of the Golden Gate and its (much) younger brother is parallel to the old-meets-new story of Bitcoin – the world’s most famous virtual currency – being accepted by the oldest casino in Las Vegas.

Indeed, in what the casino itself notes is “a unique juxtaposition of the old and new”, the Golden Gate’s lobby will now house Bitcoin processing technology just a few yards from an artifact display case containing an authentic model of the 1907 Kellogg telephone.