Scooter Mart has become one of the first businesses on the island to accept payment in bitcoin.

The business, located on Lovers Lane in Paget, was launched early this year by Nick Thomson, a former accountant at professional services firm KPMG, along with his business partner Wayne Burgess.

The company is a used bike dealership which offers services like a guaranteed repurchase scheme for shorter-term residents, with a guaranteed repurchase price, as well as a trade-in programme so owners can upgrade to another model.

Mr Thomson, who is in his mid-20s, believes bitcoin is the way forward, hence his decision to accept it as a payment for the dealership.

He said: “We at Scooter Mart have been proponents for bitcoin and other digital currencies like verge and ethereum for some time now.

“Our first sales with digital currencies were in March, when we sold some Vespas to Hub Culture in the ven currency.

“We believe that the global economy is on the cusp of entering an era of technology that will revolutionise industry globally — the era of decentralisation. We have seen the first stages of industry decentralisation with Uber, Alibaba, Airbnb, and more and we are now beginning to see stage two, with the rise of bitcoin and other blockchain distributed ledger technologies.”

Some people have concerns about the volatile valuation of bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency, which started this year trading below $1,000 per unit and was yesterday afternoon trading at around $15,200.

“We understand why the older generations have a hard time understanding this technology and we don’t blame them,” Mr Thomson said.

“But just like it was hard for older generations to feel comfortable using plastic credit cards; and just like it was hard for even older generations to use paper representations of gold reserves as currency, eventually the market will accept bitcoin or another similar digital currency.

“When this happens transactions will be much faster, cheaper, and more secure. And the benefits of this technology go far beyond just transactions — we will soon see some almost unimaginable innovations stem from this technology including decentralised cloud storage, and even possibly offline internet.”

Mr Thomson believes that bitcoin will not be going anywhere for a while.

“This is an exciting time in history. Scooter Mart accepts bitcoin because it is the future, and it’s here to stay,” he added.

Scooter Mart is having a Christmas blow out sale and selling bikes for the value of 0.15 bitcoin.