By Tuan C. Nguyen November 5 at 9:25 AM

Step inside the newest coffeehouse on Dlnick street in Prague and it doesnt take long to notice that somethings amiss. Theres no cash register, nor a counter where customers would typically form a line.

Instead, youll find a long, wood slab table situated ever so slightly towards the left side of the room, where a wide selection of pastries, along with menus, plates, cups, utensils, jugs of water and an expresso machine can be found neatly laid out in the open.

Oddly enough, theres something about the arrangement thats refreshing, and at the same time, a bit disconcerting. Upon passing through the first time, my initial reaction was to quickly scan the room for any apron-wearing employee. And as the confusion intensified, so did the urge to grab a cup and, heck, whip up a latte myself.

Just as I began mulling over that very notion, a gentlemen with a tightly-trimmed beard and who looked to be in his 20s, got up from a nearby table, where he had been seated with a couple of young women, and walked over to greet me.

I know the set-up can be sort of disorientating, but thats the whole point, Michal Navrtil, operations manager and part-time barista, assured me. The idea is that by not having uniforms, we also get rid of the imposed separation between patrons and workers.

Paraleln Polis, which in Czech means Parallel World, is known mostly for being perhaps theworlds first bitcoin-only cafe. (Heres my photo essay of what its like to buy coffee in the shop.) All transactions from wages to point of sale are processed virtually, using one of the most well-recognized cryptocurrencies. More broadly though, the recently-renovated space, which includes a co-working room and hacker space, was conceived as way to demonstrate on a micro level how an entirely decentralized society might function.

Even within the management team, there are no hierarchies, saida spokesman for the cafe who goes by the pseudonym Petr lka. Everyone who works here is considered a partner in the organization.

To understand whats going on here is to peer into the collective mind of Ztohoven, the rabble-rousing band of artists and hackers that run the joint. Known for their elaborate, guerrilla-style pranks, the anonymous group made headlines back in 2007, when six of its members hacked a live news broadcast signal and inserted a computer-generated atomic mushroom cloud that projected onto viewers TV screens. Prosecuted for scaremongering, they characterized the stunt as nothing more than a statement about the medias capacity to brainwash the public. Criminal charges was subsequently dropped.

Since then, almost allinvolved have come clean with their true identities and are now channeling their penchant for subverting authority toward educating the public about what they perceive to be the encroaching tyranny of centralized institutions.

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Innovations: The liberating idea behind Pragues bitcoin-only cafe