A Forward-Thinking Move With Musqet
Brighton’s vibrant seaside restaurant, Indian Summer has partnered with Musqet, a cutting-edge financial technology platform, to accept bitcoin payments. Indian Summer will, leverage the payment technology from Musqet to deliver instant transactions over the Lightning Network, highlighting the ever growing adoption of Bitcoin in the UK.
Indian Summer Managing Director, Rob Heasman, comments, “Incorporating Bitcoin into our operations is not just a payment alternative; it’s an informed decision to optimise our financial health.”
NASDAQ listed MicroStrategy launched their own Bitcoin strategy in 2020 and the Founder and former CEO, Michael Saylor is a leading key figure in this initiative and is known for his strategic investments in bitcoin and vocal support of its potential. His approach treats bitcoin as a primary treasury reserve asset, emphasising its value in hedging against inflation. He famously stated, “Bitcoin is outperforming gold as an inflation hedge by a factor of 50”.
Saylor’s comparison of bitcoin to “digital gold” underscores its potential as a stable and long-term store of value, surpassing traditional assets like gold despite its short term volatility. His perspective and success with bitcoin strategy have influenced many businesses, including Indian Summer in Brighton, to consider bitcoin as a viable and strategic financial asset for the future in the face of continuing currency debasement and high inflation.
With Musqet, Indian Summer is not just accepting bitcoin; they’re managing it as a balance sheet treasury asset and plan to capitalise on bitcoin’s potential for growth to support their own financial health and success. Indian Summer, in adopting bitcoin is reflecting a broader movement within the UK business sector where cost pressures are high, margins are thin and only the most proactive and innovative can survive.
One area that Mr Heasman, challenged the Musqet team on when they initially approached the business to accept bitcoin payments related to the energy consumption of the network. Brighton has a strong environmentally conscious community and Mr Heasman was at first sceptical but later surprised when the Musqet team outlined the positive environmental impacts. Mr Heasman said, “I had heard about the asset a few years ago and I knew there was a notion that it was bad for the environment but I didn’t know why. When the team outlined that the bitcoin network uses almost 60% renewable electricity and that in other parts of the world it removes damaging methane emissions from the atmosphere I was pleasantly stunned.”
A Musqet spokesperson added, “the value of Bitcoin to the world really is immeasurable. Not only does it safeguard basic human rights and freedoms through an open, inclusive, permissionless, decentralised monetary network, it also creates an incentive model for clean and renewable energy businesses to ensure they always have a buyer of last resort for their energy during times of excess generation when that energy would otherwise go unused on the grid”.
For detailed insights and further information on Bitcoin payments, visit the Musqet website