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The promotional Bitcoin Car stops in Santa Cruz on Friday. (Thomas Mendoza -- Santa Cruz Sentinel)

By Jennifer Pittman

SANTA CRUZ >> The Bitcoin Car, a Canadian-based, four-wheeled promotional tour for the nascent digital currency, drove into downtown Santa Cruz on Friday afternoon and parked in front of Lulu's at the Octagon caf, the latest local merchant to invite bitcoin transactions.

"Just four years ago, it was considered magic money and people were scoffing at it, but now you can find people in just about every community who are using bitcoin," said tour driver Robalo Davidson, the founding CEO of Kryptoz, a Canadian marketing company behind the tour.

Bitcoin is a software-based online payment system first introduced in 2009, according to Wikipedia.

Davidson together with his father, Bryan, has traveled about 20,000 miles on a zigzagging tour of North America. They are two-thirds of the way through a planned six-month tour that began in Edmondton, Alberta, Canada.

The tour will end with a raffle winner who can choose between the car, a 2014 Kia Soul decked out with Bitcoin decals, or bitcoin currency valued at CA$10,000 Canadian dollars. People can sign up for the raffle at the https://www.facebook.com/KryptozCom.

Advocates of the new currency are still grappling with significant issues related to the security, technology and volatility of the currency, he said, but "it's gaining traction," Davidson said.

That the relatively small community of Santa Cruz County would have picked up more than a handful of Bitcoin merchants this early in the evolution of the new kind of money is impressive, he said. Only a couple of communities have fledgling Bitcoin communities such as Cleveland and New York.

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Bitcoin Car tour makes Santa Cruz visit