A luxury US hotel chain will accept bitcoin, dogecoin, and other cryptocurrencies as payment
- Kessler Collection hotels will now accept bitcoin, dogecoin, ether, and other cryptos as forms of payment.
- The luxury US hotel chain said this will help global travelers circumvent currency exchange fees.
- Dogecoin is a cryptocurrency that began as a meme.
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Cryptocurrency users will now be able to pay for their hotel rooms with bitcoin, dogecoin, and ether when they stay at a Kessler Collection hotel.
The luxury hotel group, which owns hotels in Alabama, Colorado, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina, announced on Tuesday that it will accept cryptocurrencies including the meme-token dogecoin as forms of payment.
"This move will make it easier for guests traveling globally, both in time saved from going to a local currency exchange and in money saved with a lower exchange rate," said Kessler Chief Financial Officer, Fravy Collazo.
The announcement comes as more institutions like Tesla and the Dallas Mavericks pledge to adopt cryptocurrencies as payment.
While Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has stated that dogecoin has no intrinsic value and is simply a "fun" asset, his NBA team is now the largest dogecoin merchant in the world. Last week he announced that the team has completed more than 200,000 transactions with the token.
Customers at Kessler Collection hotels will be able to pay in bitcoin, bitcoin cash, ether, dogecoin, as well as stablecoins USDC, Binance USD, Gemini Dollar, and PAX.
However, with many bitcoin investors preaching the message of "HODL," which means holding the cryptocurrency in the long-term and avoiding selling, it's hard to imagine the hotel chain will see a huge surge of bitcoin payments following this announcement.
"If you are optimizing for growing your investments, a better question is 'why would you go on vacation if you can invest those funds in crypto?'," Thomas Perfumo, Head of Business Operations and Strategy at Kraken told Insider. "An investor could otherwise simply purchase and transfer additional crypto without reducing their holdings, all within minutes or hours."