Bitcoin cannot be accepted as payment for alcohol in the State of Ohio

In the months and years to come, experts project that state governments would be implementing rules and regulations pertaining to bitcoin. New York is on the verge of installing bitcoin licenses (PDF), while more states have been issuing investor alerts (as we reported Monday morning).

The state of Ohio has become one of the first governments to take regulatory action against bitcoin. The Buckeye State’s latest measure consists of prohibiting the usage of bitcoins for alcohol sale transactions.

It all reportedly began when a journalist at Cleveland.com had sought clarification from the Ohio Department of Public Safety for a story regarding the Bitcoin Boulevard U.S. project in the Cedar & Lee District of Cleveland. The question: will accepting bitcoin hurt local liquor licenses? Apparently so, according to a state official.

“Bitcoin cannot be accepted as payment for alcohol in the State of Ohio,” the Ohio Department of Public Safety, the governmental body in charge of dispensing liquor licences, said in a statement.

The decision was made after Eric Wolf, agent-in-charge with the Ohio Investigative Unit of the Ohio Department of Public Safety in Columbus, argued that the value of bitcoin is volatile and regularly changes each day that it would be classified as a commodity rather than a legitimate currency.

The article went in-depth describing how more merchants in Cleveland are accepting bitcoins, but confirmed that the level of transactions is not as high as credit cards. They cited how much they liked how there was pretty much no risk because they converted bitcoins into dollars right away. They also appreciated the low transaction costs and that it required very little investment.

“Our cost of entry was literally zero. Business owners simply click on the Bitcoin app, create a QR code, the [customer’s] wallet app reads the QR code, and sends me a confirmation code. It works very much like a credit card,” said Adam Fleischer of The Wine Spot. “We convert it to U.S. dollars immediately, because from my point of view, that kind of minimizes our exposure There are other internet based currencies out there, like iTunes dollars. What I tell people is ‘What I’m embracing is a new and emerging technology.'”

As was reported last week, Coinmap.org, a website that lists bitcoin businesses in the world, has now more than 4,100 enterprises, but there could definitely be a whole lot more because merchants might be unaware of the resource.