It’s a Monday afternoon at a ten-pin bowling alley in Wandsworth, south London, and as the manager, Paul, reaches for the card machine to take my payment, I stop him. “I’d like to pay with bitcoin,” I say.

After only a brief pause, he pulls out a second payment machine that looks like a mobile phone. A QR code flashes on the screen and I scan it using an app on my phone, which is connected to a bitcoin wallet.

I confirm the payment by tapping my screen and moments later it flashes green: payment confirmed. I doubt anyone watching this swift transaction would guess that it had required hours of careful planning on my part.

Lily Russell-Jones managed to pay for a game at Strike Bowling with bitcoin

Bitcoin, the world’s most popular cryptocurrency, was designed to