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Could You Be Paying for Your Next Hotel Stay in Bitcoin?

Where: 222 W Houston Ave [map], Fullerton, CA, United States, 92832

For a brief moment this year, the Howard Johnson in Fullerton, Calif., near Disneyland, was taking an unusual form of currency--bitcoin.

Bitcoin is an electronic currency that's only accepted in the digital world. It's not recognized by any government, it's entirely unregulated and the only ways to get your hands on bitcoin is to either buy it with real cash or spend days "mining" for it on the internet. For more on how it works, you can (try to) read the bitcoin entry on Wikipedia.

Yet, Jefferson Kim, the owner and manager of both the Howard Johnson and the Red Roof Inn in Buena Park was eager to use bitcoin for hotel reservations saying that he would "personally like to see the BTC succeed." On the hotel's website, he detailed how to pay for a room with bitcoin.

One person who took him up on this? Wired contributing editor, Joshua Davis, who wrote about bitcoin for a piece in the New Yorker (the October 10th issue.) Davis booked a room at the hotel online for 10.305 bitcoins.

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