What the Sheetz Crypto Promo Actually Means

Yesterday, my X feed was filled with two large bitcoin news accounts that ALL CAPS post news items. Their posts tend to portray news and headlines about the industry. I think these sorts of posts are valuable for people looking to stay loosely informed, but taking them at face value as truth tends to provide a muddy picture at best. The news yesterday was that Sheetz, a convenience store and gasoline chain with over 750 stores in Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland, would be accepting bitcoin.

Here is how the news was portrayed by one of the accounts:

If you take this headline at face value, it is insanely bullish news. My immediate reaction was excitement because this is a big corporation opting to incentivize users to pay with bitcoin via lower prices. In a world with competing currencies and where one currency stands out above the rest, this is the exact behavior I expect merchants to have to incentivize their customers to provide the desired currency. That is, higher prices if you want to pay in dollars and lower prices if you opt to pay with bitcoin. Eventually, this behavior catches on everywhere, and eventually, bitcoin becomes the preferred medium of exchange.

Although that is all taking a headline at face value and extrapolating out what it means. Funny enough, I texted the tweet to a friend and said, “This is just a headline and I haven’t looked into it. But if true, this is what happens when you want a different currency to be used.”

So, let’s break the headline down.

Sheetz accepting cryptocurrency is not new. They announced a full crypto payment rollout in November of 2024 after a pilot period at select locations.

Okay, so not new news that Sheetz accepts cryptocurrency, as the headline would lead you to believe.

Sheetz accepts cryptocurrency through a partnership with a company named Flexa and users must use Flexa eligible wallets. Additionally, other digital assets, including Ethereum, Litecoin, and stablecoins, are all accepted.

So, Sheetz is not bitcoin only, and there are limitations on how customers can pay with crypto wallets. These limitations are hurdles to the true impact of what this promotion could yield for Sheetz.

This leads me to believe this is more about the partnership with Flexa and a promotional push than Sheetz realizing the cost benefits of integrating the Lightning Network for payments. Initially, I had assumed that Sheetz saw the performance metrics that Steak n’ Shake discussed about their Lightning integration, but upon diving deeper into the fine print of what Sheetz is doing, I do not believe this to be the case.

What is new is the 50% discount, and that promotion goes through the end of August 2025. I am curious what results Sheetz drives during this period and would hope they announce results in some capacity down the line. Again, this information was left out of the headline.

In a market with so much news, it’s important to dive deeper to find the truth. Diving deeper in this case led me to be disappointed because the truth paints a much different picture than what the headlines would lead you to believe. However, I do still believe this is a positive step forward for crypto and specifically bitcoin, being normalized as a medium of exchange. The best-case scenario is that there is a noticeable uptick in purchases at Sheetz as a result of this promotion, and Sheetz continues to expand upon their bitcoin acceptance. Time will tell how this works for Sheetz, but I do expect the Sheetz example to become the norm. Corporations everywhere will be turning to accept bitcoin as payment. It is only a matter of time.

Stack SATs.

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