Inside the Bitcoin Bar Where You Don’t Need Bitcoin

Josh Lopez was walking down Seventh Street in Washington, DC, when he found PubKey. By the time Technical.ly reporter Kaela Roeder visited in January 2026, Lopez was already considering the Bitcoin bar for his birthday.

“This is going to be my new home,” he told her.

The funny thing is, you don't need Bitcoin to join him.

PubKey accepts cash and cards, and plenty of the people Roeder met in DC weren't committed Bitcoiners. Some had tagged along with friends. Others came for an open bar.

That appears to be part of the model, not a compromise.

At PubKey's New York location, Bitcoin accounted for just 7% of sales when Washingtonian reported on the company's DC expansion in December 2025.

For a Bitcoin bar, that might sound surprisingly low. It may also help explain why the concept works.

The kitchen has to hold its own

PubKey opened in New York's Greenwich Village in 2022, taking over Formerly Crow's at 85 Washington Place. It inherited an address where people already knew how to spend an evening.

The kitchen gave them another reason to stay.

Its current menu includes smash burgers, wings, chopped cheese and grilled cheese with tomato soup. At opening, the kitchen was led by Greg Proechel, whose résumé included Eleven Madison Park, according to Eater.

But there was one conspicuous omission when PubKey first opened: Bitcoin payments.

The bar initially took cash and cards while its owners worked on adding Bitcoin later.

“We'd be out of business pretty fast if we required bitcoin,” co-owner Thomas Pacchia told Eater.

That decision forced PubKey to pass a useful test. It couldn't survive simply because Bitcoin enthusiasts liked the idea. The food, drinks and atmosphere still had to persuade people to come through the door.

Some early customers, Eater reported, barely seemed aware of the Bitcoin theme at all.

Someone could become a customer before becoming curious.

The bar comes before the Bitcoin

The Bitcoin identity is not subtle once you start looking for it.

Pacchia had been organizing Bitcoin meetups at a favorite dive bar as far back as 2016. PubKey later added educational programming, events and spaces built around conversation. Its Washington location includes a podcast studio, event space and karaoke room.

But those features sit inside something deliberately familiar: a neighborhood bar.

That matters because learning about Bitcoin has historically meant entering spaces where newcomers can feel behind almost immediately. Online conversations can become technical, ideological or chaotic before someone has figured out the basics.

Pacchia told Eater that experiences on Twitter and Reddit helped inspire the idea for PubKey. His alternative was much simpler: put two people across a table from one another.

You can ask a question over a beer. Or you can ignore Bitcoin entirely and order dinner.

That flexibility may be PubKey's most interesting feature.

A business dependent on customers already owning Bitcoin would naturally limit its audience. PubKey instead lets anyone participate in the social side first. The financial technology can come later, if it comes at all.

The 7% that explains the other 93%

That is why the payment split matters.

If only 7% of PubKey's New York sales were paid in Bitcoin, then most customers were interacting with a Bitcoin business without actually conducting a Bitcoin transaction.

For another crypto company, that might be a problem.

For a bar built partly around bringing Bitcoin culture into the physical world, it may be the point.

PubKey doesn't need the friend who tagged along to download a wallet before ordering a burger. It doesn't need the birthday group to agree on monetary policy. And it doesn't need every customer to leave convinced.

It just needs the place to be somewhere people want to return to.

The Bitcoin transaction PubKey cares most about may not be the one at the register.

Sources

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