Topic: It's hard to spend Crypto - Make adopters out of entrepreneurs - page 2. (Read 286 times)

I don't know any offline store that accepts direct Bitcoin payments and not using a payment proccesor. It would be hard for retailers to implement this without exposing themselves to major volatility risks. That's the reason why atm it is more feasible to use a payment processor that directly converts BTC to fiat, but as the OP suggested it would be a start for them to stack 2-5% of the crypto payments in BTC and only convert the rest. But they need consultancy for this. Very few people actually know how to set a bitcoin and how the transactions work.

This is really great idea and it can change the course of bitcoin/crypto forever if entrepreneurs start accepting bitcoin and we can find some entrepreneurs who might like to experiment but again they are not a giant corporate and might not end up well when the market goes bearish whcih might create a negative impact but stable coin might be an option for them.

See most credit cards take a 1-3% cut of the sale price, and they charge a fee for rentals for the card readers themselves. So if you can print out say a QR code a day and have that at the till, there's a simple solution for a small business. You could then have a view only wallet open at checkout to confirm a payment has been sent. I thin k overall you can come up with a really simple infrastructure with minimal effort to make this work for any business really. Especially because at first this will be a small amount of sales.

Holding serves a purpose and makes sense. I do hope that in time there is a larger overall disbursement of BTC as I don't like the idea of any one entity holding a large amount of the total supply. I think that time will come when there is an easier way to directly make purchases with BTC or other coins that have generated wealth for people. Those of us still getting there, should still  look to make a certain percentage of direct purchases if possible with our coins to drive towards consumer solutions.

That really should have been seen as a hiccup, or a good time to fall back on Fiat. we are still no where near a complete replacement of that system so it makes sense to fall back on it from time to time. That same point in time though was also giving them some massive price jumps even from say a morning transaction to a sell point later in the day. Short lived as it was. I do see these as opportunities for some coins to cement themselves as the small/quick purchase coin of choice. I don't think we are there yet, but it would help bridge the gap.


I agree with the trying to create demand. I'm still hoping that the one store I found so far still accepts crypto payments, I called and the girl said "Good question, I'll have to call the owner." I laughed and said I'd call back on Monday. I think lightning still has a few kinks to work out especially with channel costs and things like that to work well enough as a fast payment processor. I can see some Alts being a benefit to the overall ecosystem, if not a necessity for certain levels of transactions.

Also I did stumble across those sites and will use them in the future. They seem to work better if you know what you want or where you'd like to shop. I did find more info on the furniture place it's a "Sleep Center", now I don't need a bed but I may stop in to see what they use for a system.

The driving force is the consumer. If enough people start asking if they accept bitcoin, or stating that they wish to pay in bitcoin, then business will take heed. After all, they want your money. If the best way to get your money is by accepting it as bitcoin, then they will. We shouldn't be waiting on some big multinational to do the leg work - go out and create demand.

Or just use Lightning. That's a far better solution than using some dying and insecure altcoin.

They were interested right up to the mempool backlogs of Dec 2017/Jan 2018 when you had to wait three weeks for your transaction to confirm.

At that point they gave up and they don't believe that bitcoin works with retail.

It might be worth trying to persuade shops to accept a quick confirming alt like litecoin or dogecoin, which is also on all the exchanges, so is liquid as regards to conversion to fiat. AFAIK neither litecoin or doge have ever had any mempool or confirmation problems at all, so that might be the way to go for commercial adoption of cryptocurrency.

There is another side of the coin to this story and it is the lack of business volume while accepting cryptocurrency like Bitcoin. Had there really been many people who are using Bitcoin and demanding from their favorite merchants that they be allowed to use the digital assets on their offline and online shops, then it would be easy to conclude that eventually merchants will have no choice but to join the Bitcoin bandwagon. But why bother when most Bitcoin owners are just holding and not using them to buy or pay anything? This is another big problem that should have been solved first. Maybe there should be a law that can make our Bitcoin expired once we don't use it within a year after receiving. And I am just kidding, of course.

This would be the best move for adoption. However, it's not that easy to encourage them to adopt to Bitcoin without those large enterprises doing so too. If they see huge international companies adopting to such mode of payment, then it would be much easier for them to trust the system and would follow. But until that would not happen, then there would not be a driving force that would make them support payment through Bitcoin.

I presume you have checked out https://coinmap.org/ and https://spending-bitcoin.com/? The latter is an online directory, but many of the stores have physical outlets as well.

These steps are only necessary if they want to use a payment processor. It is perfectly possible for a small retailer to just set up their own wallet. I spend bitcoin around three times a month at a local farmers' market, and the vendor I usually use totals up my bill on his phone, generates a QR code, and I transfer directly to his own wallet. No payment processor, no fancy terminal, no processing fees. Training of staff required is minimal - they just need to type in the value in fiat and the wallet does the rest, from converting to BTC, to generating a new receiving address, to generating and displaying a new QR code.

When everything is going well, and people are buying BTC - it's a no brainer that retail stores are going to try and incorporate BTC, as it will likely lead to sales and it will be worth the hassle, if it's going downhill, they can't be bothered, lol.

Yep - no Amazon is going to bother adding crypto, it won't really do anything good for them. For the smaller stores, think about the process they will need to go through (which is likely similar to this)
1. Get a payment processor for online purchases, as well as a terminal that will work in brick and mortar stores.
2. Train their staff and cashiers regarding crypto payments.
3. Charge, or personally eat the 1-2 percent payment fee that most big processers will charge, or hire a coder to create your own system.

Simply put, a lot of smaller stalls just don't have the manpower to make this a possibility.

Large oragnized retailers cannot do it because it has to be an organization level thing for them. If BTC isn't in a legal ambiguous state in your country then i think the best bet is to find target individual shops and stores. Particularly those who are related to technology. Computer hardware sellers, Consumer Electronics, Mobile retailers, Mobile/ cellphone service providers.

Apart from these a lot of service providers like Accountants, Lawyers etc would be interested in this. This will help them in getting familiar with something that is going to directly affect their own services. These are some of the people I would have chosen to proselytize if i had the option to.

And @Steamtyme, I have seen your posts in the mining section and it would be great if you can share some thoughts on this topic i started regarding option for mining.

So I'm gearing up for a bit of a road trip and will be passing through a couple major centers in my country. Now I seem to recall a few years back especially leading into the 2017 FOMO that quite a few retail outlets had started taking BTC, LTC and maybe a few others. There are articles going back a few years where there were some restaurants that had adopted the practice as well. Now I don't know how many of them set up their own wallets, or if they used a gateway service to convert crypto and be paid in FIAT. The problem is this is on the steep decline, and it doesn't seem like retail is interested. I am struggling to find a shop I can show up and pay for something with crypto.

I get it if large retailers aren't interested. Why would they it's more work for them and training. However a small business running with minimal staff could esaily adopt the practice. Ideally they would manage their own wallet and become a coiner themselves. Hell even just holding back 3-5% in the coins themselves and converting the rest would be a nice step in the right direction.

Personally I'm hoping to have a convo or 2 with any small shop I stop in at just to see what their thoughts are on the matter. It will be a small percentage that might be interested, but I feel entrepreneurs in general to be the sort that would jump into this. I'm not giving up and have a lead on a couple spots that I might be able to make this happen, if so I'm hoping to get some insight from the owners about how they got into it and why they stayed with it.

Side note I do think I found a furniture store a few hours away from me that takes payment in Crypto. I'll be trying to find out more about them as well.