CENSORED! The Challenges of Adding Cryptocurrencies as "Method of Payment" at a Shop
As quite a few of you know, Mrs. Denmarkguy and I are the proprietors of a small independent art gallery here in our hometown.
In our aspirations to be "with the program" and generally wanting to publicize and promote the whole idea of cryptocurrencies as something worthy and valid, we're in the process of deciding on the best possible way to accept both Bitcoin and Steem/SBD at our small shop.
It Should Be EASY, Right?
On the surface, that shouldn't be very hard to do, one would think. But there are some considerations that don't exactly meet the eye.
Steem/SBD is easy enough-- we already have the @reddragonfly Steemit account, which is active and involved in the artistic and creative communities here.
Accepting Bitcoin is not as easy. Not because we don't like Bitcoin, but because suddenly the relatively high BTC fees and the very long confirmation times aren't that well suited to a retail transaction that may only be the equivalent of 30-50 USD. Nobody's going to stand around for 90 minutes in a store to wait for a Bitcoin transaction confirmation. Would you? Probably not...
The best option, then, might be to use a payment processing service, instead. These are basically the cryptoverse's equivalent of a credit card processor for businesses. It costs a little more, but they take care of the heavy lifting and guarantees and promises and things... so we can "just do business."
CoinPayments.net Is one of the Most Popular Solutions... Wait... WHAT???
Ooopps! Appears that's not an option around here!
I have briefly read some reviews of some of the current services, and one of the most versatile seems to be CoinPayments.net because they process for merchants and they accept a large number of coins, above and beyond just Bitcoin and Steem/SBD.
Seems like a win-win, because as the BTC stream gets more and more costly and congested, odds are other alt coins will take over as more "functional" on a day-to-day basis.
So I go to the CoinPayments web site... and the above is a screen shot of what I get!
And as you can see from the second screen shot below, I am in "very fine company" here in the state of Washington, along with North Korea and New York.
Wow... in very fine company with NORTH KOREA...
A Bit Of Back Story... Not That it Makes Things Better...
So why did I get this message? Is Washington state "anti cryptocurrency?"
Not exactly...
Not long ago, the State of Washington legalized marijuana.
Actually, weed has been legal here for some years, but people needed to go to their doctor and get a "prescription card" (aka "green card") and then buy their weed from an authorized dispensary. Fine.
Well, that changed a couple of years back, and now anyone "of age" can walk into any "rec shop" and buy weed, subject to certain limitations.
But a "problem" (for the state) developed because "legal weed" also implied that the magic herb became a taxed and controlled substance. And a great many growers and dealers started bypassing paying those taxes by trading in (largely anonymous and untraceable) cryptocurrencies, rather than fiat.
In response, the state didn't exactly outlaw cryptos... but they made it so that anyone trading in cryptos (and especially "market makers" like exchanges) would need to provide all manners of personal identifying information.
I already experienced the effect of this once before, when my Poloniex account was suspended early last year because I was a resident of Washington state, and Poloniex refused to comply with the state's ID requirements.
And that's the same thing happening here: CoinPayments is refusing to comply with Washington state's regulations, instead censoring out anyone residing in the state.
So it appears one option is off the table...
What do YOU think? Does it surprise you that such a "censorship" is happening? What would YOU do, as a crypto trader in the state of Washington... or any place with similar regulations? Does this seem unreasonable to you... legislation with a very specific target now affecting EVERYone? Leave a comment-- share your experiences-- be part of the conversation! If you think this is a topic that deserves more attention and debate, please resteem!
(As usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for Steemit)
Created at 171212 14:38 PDT
I use CoinPayments.net for my business (live in Tennessee). Not only do they accept a lot of coins (you choose which ones out of 100s), some of them they will convert to a coin of your choice. Thus you don't have to have so many wallets. And I like that they will automatically provide a percentage discount if you want so that you can give more incentive for people to pay with cryptocurrency. I have not looked for another payment service, since this more than met my needs. But I think I heard BitPay is a payment service. Have you looked at them?
But to be honest, I think it is better that they "censor" you, than give personal identification data. I worry that other states besides NY and Washington will do the same thing once they get around to it. Now that the Senate is looking at making it criminal not to report your cryptocurrency holdings, states may start looking closely at regulating cryptocurrency. These are dark times.
I am trying to just take this in stride... I liked the idea of CoinPayments because they had so many different options. Will probably look at BitPay next... and if that is also blocked, we'll look at "direct" options. Fortunately, we can accept Steem quite easily... from anyone who has a Steem account.
I'm not even too concerned about my personal information... they already have access to loads and loads of information that documents that I seem singularly UNable to make money at pretty much anything I do!
One thing you COULD do...
It's a lot of trouble in the short term.
In the long term it's pretty cool
Coinbase is affiliated with a bank in SanFrancisco that offers the ShiftCard
(I think it's called)
the way it works it just like an other Visa Card at point of sell.
Behind the scenes magic happens..
The CUSTOMER's account with CoinBase is automagically charge what ever the amount is...sold..then converted to USD and the transaction is completed in $$$.
It takes some setting up.
The customer needs to set up a coinbase account
(for which YOU can get a $10 referral fee)
then set up the ShiftCard account..
The customer can decide to use BitCoin, Ethereum OR LiteCoin
so the high BitCoin transaction fees can be avoided.
it worked for me for a while.
then I decided to do something else.
New York and Washington State are literally North Korea.
Doesn't surprise me a bit about New York...
I am so glad to be out of New Yuck. Though, for reasons @denmarkguy states, I am a little bit surprised about Washington State being crypto intolerant.
During my time as an over the road trucker I refused to go to NewYork ....and later I refused to go to California.
Honestly, I don't think they are crypto intolerant... they are "cheat on weed taxes and fees" intolerant. Cryptos just happened to be a convenient hole to plug... with a hasty plug that affected EVERYone, instead of just the target industry.
Surprises me a bit about Washington state, though... it's one of the few states without state income tax, generally regarded as "business friendly" and generally progressive in terms of not having too many laws to interfere with people's lives.
I suspect that if you do a little bit of investigation you'll find that a californicator was behind that particular bit of nastiness.
Would not surprise me, indeed.
Our little town is screwing up some since our mayor was a transplant Californicator, a few years back. Nothing has been the same since then.
perhaps it's time to move back to Texas.
That's pretty crazy. I don't get the mentality of banning everyone from a completely legal service because some people aren't willing to comply. It's like banning cars because some people speed. It's really very childish behavior from people who are supposed to be leaders, although it's not surprising.
I guess I am not surprised... and yet I am. Washington state is typically one of the more progressive places both to live and to do business... but this one really seems to be backwards.
Yeah for sure it's backwards. What's to stop businesses who deal with cash from not claiming taxes? Nothing. Better outlaw businesses just to be sure nobody is breaking the law.
It sounds like these states are trying to get around the whole decentralization aspect of crypto currencies and in turn making it harder for legit business owners who would like to use it as a form of payment. Hmm
It IS kind of sad because our business is a legitimate taxpayer in this state, and such "blanket" actions actually serve to reduce overall revenues, not to "protect" anything. Whatever sales we might have been paid for with cryptos, we still would have been collecting and paying sales tax...
The State is only interested in protecting their domination and control.
Its their business model, not yours they want to protect.
You just need to have all your customers become steemians. :)
I agree. Many regulations like this end up having a negative effect.
I am sorry you are having issues when exchanging crypto just for living in Washington.
But it’s a normal reaction for a government like that, to act nerviously towards a technology that clearly decrease it’s power and influence in the world.
Eventually I think they will just stop the “legislative” attack on crypto and let it evolve spontaneously, in the mean time, perhaps the best action would be to start discussing this more openly so more people get involved and start supporting better policies.
Part of the reason I am putting this out there is because I want it talked about more... our business ALSO pays taxes, and legitimately reports sales. And pays sales taxes. So here the state's actions is REDUCING revenue, which would not be a popular political place to stand.
For the moment, though, this is just another head-shaking hassle.
Hmm. I wonder if using a VPN like TunnelBear would bypass something like that?
There are a number of different workarounds I am now exploring. This was mostly a vent of frustration at the fact that something that should be really simple now has become a lot more work... as IF I have endless time on my hands to sit around and deal with this stuff!
I love this line:
Wow... in very fine company with NORTH KOREA...
whatever i did i would do it quietly. The State understands the potential for loss of control.
"Everybody wants to rule the world," as that song went.
As much as anything this post was a frustrated reaction to having to do MORE work to accomplish the same relatively simple thing.
crypto is success ... History has taught us that success has a lot of enemies.