THE first cafe in the world to accept an up-and-coming digital currency is opening in Shoreham.

Nxt Cafe, on Brighton Road, will accept the crypto-currency Nxt coin and will even have an ATM where sterling can be exchanged for the currency.

The cafe is being set up by Lee Gibson Grant, whose mother and father previously ran it as Daniella’s Wacky Diner.

Nxt Cafe will serve up traditional fry-ups alongside exotic crocodile, camel and horse burgers, and southern fried chicken, with a Just Eat delivery service planned.

It was reopened using £21,000 of money crowd-funded from the online community.

Nxt coin has recently become the third most popular crypto-currency behind bitcoin and litecoin.

The ‘altcoin’ is a second-generation currency created from scratch rather than based on the bitcoin code.

It has built-in support for features such as a decentralized peer-to-peer exchange, voting systems, messaging and chat and options for instant transactions.

Instead of using powerful computers to “mine” new coins, Nxt uses existing accounts to “forge” blocks.

This method removes a security risk believed to leave other coins vulnerable.

Lee will give a talk at the forthcoming PayExpo where he will explain how the crypto-currency is not a technology but a user-friendly currency.

Nxt is a sponsor of the event and paid the sponsorship in Nxt coins – the first time this has happened.

Lee has been involved in developing a mobile payment platform for SMS or Voice with no internet or application needed.

Lee said: “It's only been available for six months but its growing very quickly. In the last two weeks it has doubled.

“It’s only now making its first access onto the market and there are a lot of big companies potentially coming on board.

“It will catch up with Bitcoin, but it’s a different coin entirely.”

Nxt Cafe will act as a social hub for people interested in finding out more.

On the risk of crypto-currencies crashing in value, Lee added: “Everything fluctuates in value. I was recently in Ukraine and the currency dropped 40% in just a few weeks. Any physical currency can change.”

For more information, go to www.nxtcommunity.org.