Leeds doughnut bakery Project D will now accept Bitcoin as payment

Cryptocurrency is a digital currency, such as Bitcoin, where virtual money is used in place of physical money. It’s a digital asset which is near impossible to counterfeit.

Co-owner Max Poynton said: “We pride ourselves on being forward-thinking and we think we could be the first bakery in the UK to accept virtual payments, but we certainly won’t be the last.

“The fact that some of the biggest companies in the world now accept the many forms of cryptocurrency indicates that it will play a significant role in the future of purchasing, possibly because it’s cheaper, faster and more secure.

“Ever since we moved our operation online, we have been busier than ever, which just proves that customers want that simplicity, so the next logical step was to accept an online currency.”

Project D recently opened its doors in Leeds at a unit in Potter Fields, near the Crown Point Shopping Park and it delivers across Yorkshire.

The bakery is ran by friends Max Poynton, Matthew Bond and Jacob Watts and has recently won the Lloyds Bank Small Business of 2020 awards after growing its annual turnover by 300 per cent last year.

The doughnut bakery is accepting payments in Bitcoin as well as other virtual currencies to make online payments easier for its customers.

Bitcoin is becoming slowly becoming more mainstream, and recent weeks have seen Elon Musk purchase 1.5bn Bitcoin for his company Tesla, so they can begin to accept it as a payment.

The doughnut bakery says it is on a mission to create the ‘world’s best doughnut’, creating food that is free from artificial flavours, and has lots of designs and flavours.

Project D believes that accepting cryptocurrency will help them make their company bigger as it opens up to more people with different means of paying.

“We were quick to realise that adapting our website, which was only a landing page originally, could help Project D survive lockdown and we were able to get this up and running within a week.

“It’s clear that today’s customers are tech-savvy and prefer to do their shopping and browsing online. The natural progression from this is to start offering cryptocurrency and we’re really looking forward to seeing just how many people are willing to purchase in this way.

“We want Project D to be as successful and well respected as Tesla and Rolex, so we are very happy to be following in their footsteps.”

Global Tribe Café, also in Leeds, accepts cryptocurrency as payment too.