(Bloomberg) -- New Yorkers suffering from crypto blues can drown their sorrows in solidarity at a new Bitcoin-themed bar. They’ll need cash to pay, though: Crypto isn’t accepted as payment. 

PubKey, located on a quiet street in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, opened about a month ago under the helm of a former Fidelity blockchain executive, with a menu centered on comfort food that’s prepared by a chef who previously trained at a three-star Michelin restaurant. The bar doesn’t yet accept Bitcoin — it plans to do so sometime soon — but it’s meant to serve as a gathering spot for digital-asset enthusiasts as well as the crypto curious. 

After a crushing 2022, with prices of all types of digital assets tanking and Bitcoin falling 60%, it’s now also serving as a meeting place to commiserate. 

“It’s been a rough year for a lot of people,” said Thomas Pacchia, co-owner of the bar and former director at Fidelity’s blockchain incubator. “The opening of this cultural hub is one of the more positive things in the industry right now.”

PubKey sports all manner of crypto paraphernalia on its walls and as decor, including a stuffed honey badger carcass, which Pacchia said is Bitcoin’s spirit animal and which represents the “honey badger don’t care” meme. 

The centerpiece of its furnishings is a series of Russian-doll nests representing some of the industry’s most disgraced personalities, including FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried, Three Arrows Capital’s Su Zhu, Alex Mashinsky of Celsius, and Do Kwon of Terraform Labs. All four saw their companies implode this year as the crypto system reoriented itself for a rising-rate environment that’s less accommodative for speculative assets. FTX and Celsius filed for bankruptcy, and Bankman-Fried is facing a raft of charges, including allegations that he orchestrated a years-long fraud before the collapse of his crypto empire.

“These are our scammers,” said Pacchia, pointing to the Matryoshka dolls. 

The former Fidelity head — who left the company in 2017 to run a private Bitcoin fund — says that Bitcoin was built as a global communications protocol, which makes it the perfect theme for a bar where fans can gather. He envisions people stopping in to talk and learn about crypto, which some may find easier to do in a group setting than by clicking around on the internet. “Most of the crypto projects out there are run by individuals or companies, and Bitcoin is the only one that has a true claim to decentralization,” Pacchia said. 

But accepting Bitcoin as a form of payment adds an “extra layer of complexity,” he said. It can complicate back-end accounting, and robust payments and bookkeeping infrastructure haven’t been built out yet. Pacchia said he wants to wants to make sure all the payments are routed correctly, and that staff are adequately trained to handle it. 

A recent tweet by PubKey tagging Jack Dorsey asked for a beta test at the bar to accept Lightning payments through the Square point-of-sale systems, to which the Block Inc. executive replied “yes, we need to do this.” Pacchia hopes PubKey will start accepting the coin soon.

Behind the PubKey food scene is chef Greg Proechel, who trained at the Institute of Culinary Education and worked at three-star Michelin restaurant Eleven Madison Park in New York. 

The menu features standard bar fare, including a “Smash Burger,” wings, grilled cheese and hot dogs like the “Dirty Dog” — a grilled beef frank topped whole-grain mustard and fried shallots on a warm poppy-seed bun. Sides include potato salad and fried mozzarella. 

If you’re as hungry as a Bitcoin investor who goes by “Uncle Zach,” it’s possible to finish all seven of the menu’s hot dogs in one sitting, with a drink of your choice to wash it down.

“I like drinking and I like Bitcoin,” he said. 

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