Bitcoin Forum

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.

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  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5205722.0) regarding option for mining.

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.

I presume you have checked out https://coinmap.org/ and https://spending-bitcoin.com/ (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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Small shops who the real owners are the ones in the store selling their stuff are likely easy to be convince to accept crypto.

 I'd like to sell some some products as well where I can travel 3-5 miles to the city where I can park my van and sell my merchandise for BTC. I'd still accept fiat but crypto is much appreciated. This will save me rent a store space while I can move from place to another where I can find crowd.

You have made a future post that reference can be made to at the time we see mass adoption in crypto. I have no doubt that the time is already here with us.
However, I think reading through your post, you kind of gave the challenge at a point to small business and I think that can happen if the owner is already a hodler. I think the bulk of it relies on institutions.

In my opinion, large entrepreneurs business establish their own set of ways that if you would give the new ways in dealing with payments they will surely have a second thought and doubt the process, and in dealing with the unknown they will surely don't want any involvement all, But with fresh entrepreneurs I think they are ready  for the risk of the unknown and sometimes think you need to consider the knowledge of the individual with cryptocurrency and Bitcoin to get someone to comfy with you, I think this is the reason behind it,

But I say good luck in finding them and establish many adopters as you could, it will be a win-win for them and us.

Most of the time, small merchants are the ones who are proactively selling stuff for bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. Large retail companies are out there, still trying to see the feasibility of accepting crypto payments all the while small lads are taking the risks. You'll get better chances of convincing one small shop to accept crypto payments than to set an appointment to a large one.

Here on where I'm at, small tech shops have been accepting bitcoin since 2017, and are still doing it til today. Several lubs in the metros are accepting crypto payments as well, though integrated within a third-party wallet service.

I see that a large retailer is already in a comfort zone where he doesn't need such technology.
In contrast to small businesses that always want to make an innovation where technology is used to make their business more efficient.
But I'm sure that one day large retailers will also switch to the technology because of their own consumer demand.

Sure, but it does nothing to drive adoption. Without adoption there is no demand, and without demand the price would be zero. The people who are actually using bitcoin for what it was intended - a currency - are the ones driving long term and sustainable price growth. Without them, we would only see wild fluctuations driven by speculation, with a long term trend towards zero. People who are only interested in holding should at least consider buying a little extra to use as spending money whenever they are adding to their holdings.

I'd hardly call it a "major" volatility risk. There's a risk, sure, but a business which is accepting bitcoin to their own wallet could quite easily mitigate this by transferring to an exchange and selling multiple times a day if they so desired with minimal effort.

Still, at the end of the day, these third party payment processors, for all their flaws, do serve as a "stepping stone" for businesses to start accepting bitcoin. As much as I think businesses would be better served just accepting bitcoin directly themselves, I do concede that these payment processors are helping to drive adoption.

Cool.  I don't know how that will help your road trip, but the more businesses that accept bitcoin the better.

That isn't true, though.  There's plenty of demand in the face of very little adoption, which is why the price of bitcoin is close to $8000 as opposed to zero, which is where it began life in 2008-09.  As a related example, people might not be using gold dubloons to purchase beer, but that doesn't mean the gold market is dead or that gold doesn't have value.  

No idea what that means.  Don't care, either.

They would definitely need some consultation early on, especially if they are completely green. Though after the fact it's simple, especially say in Canada. There are 2 processors that I can think of at the moment who have been above board for quite some time, and are not exchanges so that's a bonus. Prices and fees are reasonable. For volatility they could easily choose to set their daily rate in the morning, and run off that. Depending on their volume they can cash out immediately, or a couple times a day. Volatility should become less of an issue as time moves forward as well. So far a new start-up on tight margins I would suggest they convert most of it and often, especially if BTC makes up a large part of their sales, but other than that I think it would be a small enough percentage to start that most businesses could whether the volatility especially if they only retain a small portion of what they take in.

Do it for sure. If there is a marketplace or trade fair whatever it happens to be. If nothing else you might gain visibility by having the offering available. Hell if I didn't live in a rural community I would do the same at a garage sale. I've already placed it as an accepted method on some of the local for sale boards. If nothing else gives you something to talk about. I'm going to try and pay my electrician in BTC next time he comes over, sounded interested last time we spoke about it.

I agree 100%, I just think that savings is important in any system. Some people just take it to far. I'm not interested in seeing a 6 figure BTC when people have 1000's at their disposal. I legitimately hope we see a period in time where these large holders begin to spend or sell off portions of their holdings. It's just not very appealing when there are such dominating balances out there.We would be drastically further behind without them. They are similar to a custodial wallet in that way. It's great for learning but you hope that people evolve their understanding and grow, as opposed to becoming complacent.

I guess a cheap mattress and the back of the Van. I think I'm getting to old to pull that one anymore though. Definitely just a cool find the more I decided to look into the utility of BTC for everyday life.

In my view, the best hope for merchant adoption in the intermediate term is through apps like SPEDN (https://medium.com/gemini/flexa-and-gemini-partner-to-make-it-easy-to-use-cryptocurrency-b9ace9174bcc). It's easy for merchants because it can be implemented in any standard POS terminal (no added costs), it's intuitive with scanner/QR code, and Gemini handles the conversion on the back end. It's pretty revolutionary compared to things like Bitpay invoices and time-consuming on-chain transactions, or a costly Lightning node setup when hardly any customers are asking for it.

That's fair actually, there are wallets out there that require you to input a value, and then it will automatically generate a QR code that will put in the address and amount owed into whatever bitcoin wallet you are using. If people are smart enough to use this, they definitely save on payment fees (especially since accept fiat has them). Although, I wonder if anyone has every double-spent transactions.

That's true - all depends on how they innovate around things. Wonder how taxes would be paid and calculated on this, there is a chance to avoid tax here with crypto (not recommending to do so), which is a bit cheeky...

in short, it is hard to spend bitcoin because we don't want to spend bitcoin!

we can't expect big retailers,... to start accepting bitcoin payments when majority of people are looking at bitcoin as an investment and are hodling on tight not wanting to spend it at all. in my opinion if we want to see them adopt bitcoin we fist have to start spending it ourselves.

ps. an interesting observation that i had was in 2017 that both the increase and the decline in number of merchants happened in that year while price was rising. the increase part was well expected since whenever price rises people tend to spend more times. but the decline was an exception, and it happened due to ridiculous rise in fees. for example Valve stopped accepting bitcoin in their steam client because the transaction fee values were higher than the value of their games!
and this is another reason why we still don't see that much adoption specially among big retailers.

Does it really need to be in Bitcoin? Because in my point based on people surrounds me on a regular daily basis, the often reiterate bitcoin having a huge market transaction fee for each transaction. If we want the commerce to enable cryptocurrency, they should be free of choosing which particular crypto it should be based on their convenience and based on what cryptocurrency would be the most efficient for them.  

In terms of technicality, the establishment should also have a free wifi access where it is intended for payment whenever customers don't have their internet connection.

This. I have said this many, many times. If you want bitcoin to spread, go and spread it.

But there are thousands of altcoins to choose from. What if one stores decides they only want to accept Litecoin, and the store next door decides they only Nano, the next one only wants Dash, the next Ethereum, the next XRP, the next Dogecoin, and so on. It means I have to be constantly converting bitcoin on the go to a variety of alts and eating the conversion fee each time, being left with dust of many different coins, and also use multiple exchanges or wallets with built in exchange functions, and expose myself to the risk of trusting multiple third parties.

If a store wants to accept one or more alts alongside bitcoin then go for it, but if they only accept one specific alt then I am unlikely to ever use that store.

I just buy steam gift cards with bitcoin. I prefer it anyway. I remember when the fees were that high. Lol, we all felt rich so we wanted to spend spend spend. I don't see why people use bitcoin as an investment only and not a method to pay. Just fill your bitcoin wallet up every now and then and spend from it. Here a local payment processor stopped support for bitcoin because people were not getting their transactions in on time and things like that> (basically idiots since I never had any problems) the only time we ever had problems with that was during the time you spoke of when fees went through the roof. Then transactions took very long. So they called these limitations of bitcoin. They said they still support crypto but are waiting for something else. I don't know why they just don't support eth.

That wouldn't be in the best interest of the business, whether it's small or large.  The fluctuations in price can be too extreme, plus how is a business going to make their payroll and deal with other expenses if they have their income tied up in crypto?  I doubt their suppliers accept bitcoin.  They don't pay their employees in bitcoin.  They can't pay their electric, internet, or phone bills with bitcoin...so it just doesn't help them to keep any amount of their income as bitcoin.

This may change with time, but I doubt it.  There would have to be a global disaster of a magnitude never seen before, one which shook everyone's faith in fiat before businesses dealt with crypto and didn't use a payment processor that converted it instantly into fiat.  And as much as I support bitcoin I wouldn't want to see something like that happen.

I've got mixed feelings about Gresham's law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham%27s_law) -- this idea that people will always prefer to spend weak money (like fiat) while hoarding hard money like bitcoins. I believe the dynamic is more complex than that.

I frequently spend bitcoins. This is partly because I have some income/capital gains from it, partly for the privacy/tax implications similar to cash, partly because I simply have some. And there's probably more to it than that. I just don't feel particularly affected by the economic forces that Gresham's law is supposed to imply.

I can only speak to where I am. It's treated the same as any other business income, taken at FIAT value of whatever your invoicing the customer. It stops there if converted instantly, but if you hold then you are expected to pay capital gains taxes on it. Not to difficult to figure out in the long run, no worse implications for tax evasion than when people accept cash at the till. You either ringit up and pay taxes or .... what sale.

That's unfortunately a large part of the problem. People should be comfortable spending a portion of their BTC, or even providing services and being paid in BTC. With Valve that seems like a very shortsighted move on their part, I've never understood their reasoning. I'm not one of their customers, but it's not like they were only BTC, so why not just leave it as is. People will use other means to pay and then when the market straightened out use it once it's feasible again.

It depends on what sort of support structure is out there. There are businesses like  that actually allow you to pay your bills in Canada. For a lot of businesses that would work just fine. The majority of sales would obviously have to be converted to FIAT to cover vendors and staffing as well as any other expenses. I'm just saying they can take control of their coins and maybe hold back a small percentage to use. the 3-5% would come out of profits, and used how they see fit.   (https://bylls.com/[bylls[/url)

The never to be solved puzzle!
I want to buy an electric car, but where the hell do I change it? And there are no charging stations because....nobody buys an electric car!
How did we get over it? Slowly, with huge government funds, a lot of money put in companies, regulation about pollution and much more.

What will bitcoin need to change this? God knows!
Because not only we have the problem of not having where to spend, but we also have the problem of people not willing to spend!


Also, I would like to point out something about the fees.
If you're not using a third-party payment processor where you're actually dealing with fiat only, fees are hitting you twice or thrice!
Because not only has the client to pay some fees for the tx, but you generate an address for each customer, so you need to collect those in one chunk (fees!), then you might want to send them to an exchange (fees!) so if we go back to more expensive fees than now it will be hard for small shops to deal with this.


Oh, such memories.
When you went on a trip to France and you end up with guldens, marks, francs , another kind of francs, all worth less than what now are 20 euros and in coins so you couldn't change them at any bank, and of course, when you went again on a trip you forget to take them with you and you come back with more.

Yes, because of the high volume that bitcoin is actually not very suitable to be used as a means of payment, especially those that are routine such as electricity bills, employee salaries, etc. The value may change every month, while the costs of production and other needs are always the same so that it is not effective enough to be compared with the price changes in BTC.

That is why I repeatedly say that fiat and cryptocurrency do not replace each other, but complement each other.

So you the merchant has to pay consolidation fees, and potentially also sending-to-an-exchange fee, if they don't combine the consolidation and sending to an exchange in the same transaction. These can be done with fees of a couple of sats/vbyte and will work out at a few cents, much lower than the 2 - 3% that payment processor are charging.

I've thrown away some coins and small notes of old European currencies which are no longer in circulation from vacations in decades gone by. Felt wrong, but I was moving house and didn't fancy taking them along for the ride.

I pay several recurring monthly payments in bitcoin. Sure, the price is volatile at the moment, but with widespread adoption it will level out. It's worked out better for me over the last few years than paying these bills with higher and higher amounts of ever devaluing fiat.