A small business being at the mercy of random payment providers is yet another demonstration that there is a fundamental social need as well as a strong market demand for decentralized payment systems like Bitcoin.
I mean that's some users' fault, isn'it it? Isn't it the job of the payment processor to identify and handle problem users and crooks? What am I paying them for? I don't really understand how they can boot customers, _and_ boot them _without an explanation_. They should need at least a ruling from a judge. I can understand if my audience is "risky" and hence I get no discount on fees and so on, but this behaviour is unacceptable and - IMHO - it breaks business freedom and (potentially) competition.
I don't know if it's the same in the US, but in Italy, as an example, a "real" business operating in brick-and-mortar locations is considered a "public place" (pubblico esercizio) and it can't refuse its services to people that can pay for them (barring some legal limits, e.g. selling alcohol to kids or to people that are already drunk). I think that in a ruling some years ago those rights were extended to online shops and activities. If you want to give services to a restricted audience you can create a "private club", but then you're severely limited in what you can do in marketing/advertising and such.
I really think the same should happen for internet activities. This is blatant - albeit algorithmic - discrimination.
Lightning (layer 2 on top of Bitcoin) seem to be fitting the bill pretty well at this point.
Lightning appears to be a failure too - it requires a lot of money to be comitted to the network and constant vigilance so as not to lose your funds.
Further, the market demand you talk about doesn't seem to be playing out - if anything the accepting of cryptocurrencies for actual transactions (rather than just speculation) seems to be on the decline.
As for Lighthing, I think you're singing its demise a little too early.
They are also not the only way to scaling and ease-of-use.
Wikileaks may well have been happy. That doesn't mean bitcoin is a good solution for wider use, especially with its transaction throughput limitations.
Ease of use in the cryptocurrency world is something of a joke...
As a "dumb user" I went to buy some crypto after the initial crash last winter. I found that: Most exchanges do not permit use in my state (Washington). Of those that did, Coinbase/GDAX ended up having technical issues, leading me on for months of useless support tickets, before blackholing me entirely, and once I finally obtained some eth on gemini, diversifying it into a handful of altcoins required yet-another "exchange search", learning how to do some very sketchy wallet transfers, and using MUCH less trusted exchanges that actually allowed my state and the pairings I needed. (And if I want to liquidate my position, I have to basically invert this whole mess of a flow.)
I very well could be going about this in a dumb way, or it could have improved, thus this post (in that someone can feel free to correct me). My perception is that ease of use is in fact a joke, and if crypto wants to become a thing for "Boring Normal People" it needs to fix that.
- hard to use because governments willfully get in the way
- intrinsically hard to use.
The latter is a real hard problem for crypto that will require an entire generation to die off (those who can't understand and will never understand that using a 3rd party to manage your money isn't compulsory or even desirable anymore) before things evolve.
1. Loss aversion - You lose your bitcoin wallet you lose everything. You can't have that with large amounts of money or you'll bankrupt people.
2. Anonymity - Thieves can steal money, and to get it back you have to expose yourself and claim the money, if you're lucky enough to get it back at all. Governments can also very easily track users.
3. Decentralized - You have no one single person to punish when things go wrong, or seek help from. You're alone just like everyone else.
This is not a description of why cryptocurrency is intrinsically hard to use. It's intrinsically hard to use because - - It requires insane levels of OpSec to keep safe - It can be sent to the wrong place with a typo, and never recovered - Its transactions are irreversible, this is not a feature for most users - The fees are opaque and variable - Transaction processing can take an arbitrary amount of time
It's not that people 'don't understand' that using a 3rd party is unnecessary, it's that these third parties provide a lot of valuable services. The use of cryptocurrency is a marked step backwards from the existing situation for most scenarios.
And how is that going to help with the OP problem, I wonder?
Gov't says your business ain't what we like, payment can't happen, business is dead.
If their policies were anything less than "we support any legal business", they'd be spending decades in the courts.
Conversely, a lot of private payment processors are beholden to the tastes of their clients and investors. Even if you have all the right metrics and tech about fraud, chargebacks, customer satisfaction, see how many processors close their doors if you say you're selling rifles or porn.
You're making it sound as though "being a utility" means "no fees". I cannot name any utility that is fee-free.