The scene is easy to picture. After a day in the snow, out on the trails or on a boat on the lake, a visitor sits down at a restaurant with mountain views, opens the menu, and, when it is time to pay, instead of pulling out a credit card, scans a QR code to settle the bill with crypto.

That setup is still the exception, but recent moves by restaurants in California suggest this kind of payment is leaving the tech crowd’s imagination and getting closer to the day-to-day reality of tourism in the state.

In Sacramento, for example, a startup called Food Token already allows local chains like Jimboy’s Tacos, Brookfields and neighborhood coffee shops to accept Bitcoin, Ethereum and stablecoins in transactions that work, from the restaurant’s point of view, like a digital gift card, with a flat $0.10 fee per transaction. Well below what many businesses pay today in credit card processing fees.

This kind of testing in urban areas may be a preview of what could reach tourist destinations like Tahoe, where every detail of the visitor experience tends to have a direct impact on the local economy.

From Sacramento To The Mountains: Restaurants Enter The Digital Wallet Era

The Sacramento experiment is happening at a time when a meaningful share of Americans already know about or own crypto, even if most people remain skeptical. Data from the Pew Research Center shows that roughly 17% of adults in the U.S. have invested in or currently hold cryptocurrencies.

A 2025 Gallup survey indicated that approximately 14% of American adults say they own some type of crypto. For this engaged minority, paying with digital assets is nothing new. Multiple sectors are adopting crypto, especially in entertainment, leisure and services.

On gaming platforms, it is already common. Even in real money games offered by online casinos or betting sites, crypto assets are a viable option for deposits and withdrawals. The notice that a site accepts crypto payment options, like in the Robbie Purves compilation, is starting to sound less like a perk and more like something everyone should offer.

That is, of course, in the online world, where people can place bets, join promotions and tournaments, and play live with other users. In person, this possibility is still seen as a bit of an extravagance, although it is slowly becoming a natural extension of how people already pay for flights, hotels, rideshare apps and digital services.

In Sacramento, the model is straightforward. The customer scans a QR code, chooses which coin they want to use and, in practice, converts that balance into a digital credit to spend on food or wine, while the restaurant receives dollars, without having to handle public keys or price volatility directly.

If models like this are replicated by chains or independent restaurants up in the mountains, Tahoe could become a destination that speaks to this more digital-first audience without turning away anyone who still prefers cards or cash. For tourists, the message is convenience and a sense of welcome; you can pay the way you do at home. For restaurants, it is the chance to test a new payment channel without giving up the traditional register.

Tourism In Tahoe Is Already Worth Billions And Sensitive To How People Pay

This discussion is not happening in a vacuum. Tahoe is not just a postcard view, it is an economic engine that depends directly on visitor traffic. An economic impact report for North Lake Tahoe shows that direct travel spending in the region reached about $1.32 billion in 2023, up 3.7% compared to 2022.

Of that total, nearly $740 million came from lodging and food service, and tourism supported roughly 9,070 direct jobs, including about 4,820 positions in accommodations and food service alone.

At the state level, the picture is even bigger. According to Visit California, travel spending in the state reached $150.4 billion in 2023, surpassing the pre-pandemic record set in 2019. That activity generated around $12.7 billion in state and local tax revenue and supported more than 1.15 million hospitality jobs.

In other words, every small decision that makes it easier for visitors to spend, from opening hours to payment methods, has the potential to ripple through jobs, tax collections and local investment capacity.

For destinations like South Lake Tahoe, which compete for visitors with other snow and leisure hubs across the U.S., offering payment options that match the habits of younger domestic and international travelers can work as a symbolic, but meaningful, advantage.

For a guest arriving from San Francisco, Los Angeles or overseas with a digital wallet loaded with stablecoins, being able to pay for parts of the trip, from breakfast to après-ski, in crypto reinforces a sense of modernity that goes beyond the scenery.

Who Really Pays With Crypto Today?

Despite all the buzz, using cryptocurrencies as a means of payment is still a niche behavior. A briefing released in September 2025 by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, based on the Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking (SHED), shows that the share of U.S. consumers using crypto to pay for purchases or send money fell from almost 3% in 2021-2022 to less than 2% in 2023 and 2024.

In absolute terms, that comes out to something like 5 million adults using crypto for payments in a universe of more than 250 million. The profile of people who pay with crypto also does not match only the high-income investor stereotype.

The same study indicates that younger adults, men, users of alternative financial services and consumers with weaker ties to the traditional banking system are more likely to use cryptocurrencies for day-to-day payments.

On top of that, the most common reason cited for using crypto is not just the search for privacy or speed, but the fact that the person or business on the other side prefers to be paid that way.

That shift in motivation is key to understanding what is happening with restaurants in California. It also helps explain why initiatives like Food Token focus on removing friction for the restaurant, offering a platform where the business gets paid in dollars while the currency conversion and tech complexity are handled by the intermediary.