Is there an industry standard for this (or a de facto standard thereof)?
(These funds will be used to pay for business expenses that that can be settled with cryptocurrency. We do not intend to convert to traditional currency unless needed. We do not intend to hold cryptocurrency as an investment.)
The bigger issues I had that I am skeptical any self-hosted options have is protecting your wallets from being poisoned by 'black' bitcoin. Coinbase (and maybe others?) keeps a blacklist of banned wallets (stolen or associated with crime or gambling[0]). If a customer pays you from a black address, you may end up poisoning your entire crypto wallet and get flagged when you try to cash out.
[0] - https://www.reddit.com/r/onlinegambling/comments/kpel7x/so_i...
Can you expand further on this? Is there a public list of blacklisted addresses we can download/query? How far does the association extend for an address to be blacklisted by other entities?
For this reason I would suggest using btcpayserver to only accept monero, since it is fungible like cash; for other cryptocurrencies I just don't know how to check if you're dealing with sanctioned entities etc without a middleman
1 BTC is better thought of as a booster pack of 100,000,000 NFTs.
The bitcoin blockchain is public. This means the transaction history of every single bitcoin can be traced. It also means bitcoins are not fungible, you can tell bitcoins apart from each other.
If your bitcoin has ever touched a criminal wallet, chances are it will be blacklisted. Exchanges will refuse to accept it.
> Is there a public list of blacklisted addresses we can download/query?
Yes.
https://www.treasury.gov/ofac/downloads/sdnlist.txt
It's also interesting how the US treasury tried to blacklist a Monero wallet and ended up sanctioning a transaction hash instead.
> Digital Currency Address - XMR 5be5543ff73456ab9f2d207887e2af87322c651ea1a873c5b25b7ffae456c320;
Note the lack of a 0x prefix. Here's the transaction on a block explorer:
https://localmonero.co/blocks/search/5be5543ff73456ab9f2d207...
> How far does the association extend for an address to be blacklisted by other entities?
I don't know. I've seen some exchanges refuse to accept bitcoins from "unhosted" wallets, meaning they consider all non-exchange wallets to be tainted.
Legitimate merchants and users in bitcoin ecosystem should push back against overreaching censorship, and treat bitcoins as fungible commodity. Merchants and users shouldn't start censoring transactions themselves. If there's a problem at an exchange, it should be boycotted and forced out of business.
Also, if you're using Bitcoin with Lightning Network only, it's not possible to become associated with blacklisted addresses.
This is not true, there are many ways to gain information on those transactions.
> Some exchanges have been known to blacklist addresses, because they might have to follow certain AML/ATF orders. That's also why they don't accept completely anonymous cryptocurrencies like Monero at all.
It is necessary to react when you receive funds linked to illegal activity. Pretending that BTC is fungible when it is not can't change that. Accepting fungible goods like monero, cash, gold is generally legal though. So exchanges like Kraken do trade Monero but still do their due diligence on BTC transactions
How can a system that supports this be considered better than USD or EUR?
Yes. Bitcoins are not fungible. If they've been tainted by criminal transactions, they might as well be worthless.
There are better coins out there that do not have this problem. Monero, for example.
> Do merchants really rely on some opaque third-party service to determine which accounts are able to pay?
Not if they use Monero where transaction details are simply not made public. Even if they managed to blacklist some Monero addresses, it wouldn't matter since you can just make more addresses.
> Is this third-party able to essentially blacklist aka unbank accounts at their will, without a legal appeal process?
Yeah. The US treasury will place some address into a database and everyone holding bitcoins that passed through that address will instantly be made poorer.
https://www.treasury.gov/ofac/downloads/sdnlist.txt
Monero is apparently able to subvert these sanctions. The link above also shows the US treasury failing to sanction a Monero address.
> Digital Currency Address - XMR 5be5543ff73456ab9f2d207887e2af87322c651ea1a873c5b25b7ffae456c320;
Note the lack of a 0x prefix. That's not a wallet. It's a transaction identifier. Here's the transaction on a block explorer:
https://localmonero.co/blocks/search/5be5543ff73456ab9f2d207...
Pretty awesome.
> How can a system that supports this be considered better than USD or EUR?
It can't. Bitcoin is a failure. The fact it's still number one in the market is proof of how irrational it is.
Did something apocalyptic happen to the many coin mixing services around?
Privacy cannot ever be optional. If it is, most people will not take that option simply because it's not the default. Then everyone who does will stand out.
> We do not intend to convert to traditional currency unless needed.
This is a big risk due to cash flows. Most stores operate on a margin on merchandise that is under 10%, with a turnover on goods averaging months.
If a currency fluctuates in value more than ~10% over several months, this can easily drive an otherwise healthy business into cash flow driven bankruptcy.
Selling 100% of your goods, and then not being able to replenish that stock because the crypto you held has dropped more than 10% over a 6 month period is a disaster waiting to happen.
Bitcoin is volatile in short-term, but long-term deflationary. Fiat currencies are stable in short-term, but long-term inflationary. It's a trade-off, and it depends on your circumstances which allocation works for you.
Not really, because you are continuously buying and selling, and raising your prices as you go along with inflation.
> Bitcoin is volatile in short-term, but long-term deflationary.
Long-term is not relevant for the issue I'm describing. It is a short term fluctuation that drives you into cash-flow bankruptcy.
Past performance is not indicative of future performance.
Tell that to the literally hundreds of "shops" that dropship goods for ~50x the buying price.
Sure from time to time someone finds manages to make a decent income with such an operation, but it's not because the unit economics are so great.
This is why you want to use stablecoins. There is plenty to choose from.
OP is asking for a way to collect money from customers to cover expenses that can be paid via crypto.
By accepting stablecoins, OP:
- Does not need to pay payment processor fees.
- Does not need to wait days to have the funds available.
- Does not have the risk of facing chargebacks
- Does not need to take the money from the bank to pay crypto.
It's been a while since I've had a payment outright fail, TBH.
Chivo is not crypto. And that's what most folks there are being forced to use by the local dictator. It's centralized, trusted, censorable and entirely antithetical to the Satoshi white paper.
[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2021/09/07/el-...
( 65 K / second)
Which is not a good sign for general LN adoption.
https://github.com/amiuhle/kasisto
> Kasisto is a Point of Sale payment system to accept the cryptocurrency Monero. The only requirement is an internet connection, there are no third parties involved.
> To be fast (confirmation within seconds), Kasisto accepts unconfirmed transactions.
If you're not using a middleman, then I think it would be wise to use a private-by-default currency so that others cannot see your financials.
---
EDIT: Kasisto may be obsolete, not sure. I recommend asking at https://old.reddit.com/r/Monero or at one of their IRC channels https://www.getmonero.org/community/hangouts/
Also a great place to start is Monero Outreach [0]. A bit down the page is a link to a github which links to different integration possibilities for things like WooCommerce, Shopify, Magento, and OpenCart [1].
[0] https://www.monerooutreach.org/merchants/how-to-accept-moner...
[1] https://github.com/monero-integrations
EDIT: Another link I found: https://monerointegrations.com
(Disclaimer, I own some XMR after learning about it here on HN years ago.)
For now, since fiat onramps are pretty obvious, people report their taxes like normal. Record each transaction until it's good enough, give or take some under-the-table cash.
Here's an interesting project that's trying to encourage crypto adoption: https://cryptoforthehomeless.org/
Oh yeah, cryptocurrency classic - just look at the outcome of this thread, basically no solid solution backed up by majority of responders, almost every response links to different shiny landing page with plenty of buzzwords.
However, it's time for it to die in order to make way for better projects like Ethereum and Monero.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/jul/31/out-of-co...
It was designed to be a currency, and so for it to be good at that design, it should do currency things well, like broad support from point of sale systems.
The fact that gold doesn’t have broad support from POS systems is irrelevant to its intended purpose in that context, of being a store of value.
Their analogy doesn’t work because they’re comparing what bitcoin was designed to do, with what gold isn’t designed to do.
Edit: marketing/slogans/subtitles/bylines/etc
1 of the 3 economic roles of “money” is partially fulfilled. If that’s still a currency, so is the Confederate dollar.
ie. with crypto, u can setup a wallet, u can buy currency, then lend it out to a DeX for fees and apy in 3 clicks, no wait period, minimal capital expenditure. no forms to sign.
that kid at macdonalds right now can DCA into crypto using his gaming PC at night time. if u had been doing that the last 10 years, u would be retired by now. get it? the younger generation, crypto is a investment opportunity like our parents generation saw real-estate.
times have changed. the govs had there time to ban crypto, they havnt. its less volatile and more secure and more open then any 3rd world country currency. the investment bankers are in it. its not going anywhere. the masses (20-30s) have who are stacking crypto are going to be the voter bloc of the next 20 years.
A few important questions here:
- What currencies do your customers hold?
– At what price points are you transacting?
– What are you selling?
– How much of this process are you looking to automate?
– Estimated monthly trx volume?
Presumably you are not interested in exposure to price volatility (since you're not holding as an investment) so your holdings should be denominated in USDC and custodied, earning a yield through BlockFi or Nexo.
I'll keep an eye out for your answer in the comments.
What is the best option to offer crypto payments to customers who hold no crypto and are new to crypto?
I have a side project in a domain where I pay about 15-20% for CC verification/foreign exchange/payout.
Huge numbers where crypto should be preferable.
However, even with discounts I can not get any crypto payments. Customers do prefer to use CCs.
I check the crypto payments space every few years but do not see anything remotely user friendly.
Paypal/Revolut/Venmo etc they all offered some benefits/stickiness to the customer.
They were also easy to onboard(for one intially Paypal delayed KYC extra security until later)
I am still looking for a pure crypto solution.
I wouldn't assume that cryptocurrency will solve that problem for you. That's a huge cut, and I suspect if you get a little creative, you could bring that cut down. (Remember that cryptocurrency has its own set of problems too.)
> to customers who hold no crypto and are new to crypto
> Customers do prefer to use CCs
IMO, look for a different credit card solution.
In the US, Strike is probably the easiest one to get started. There's also no fees to buy bitcoin. Downside is that it works just in the US and a few additional countries. https://strike.me
You can buy bitcoin on Paypal and Venmo, but they can't be used for payments yet.
If you want to accept stabletokens (which seems to be the case since you don't want to necessarily hold crypto as an investment, so stable tokens can help you to avoid volatility), you will certainly want to be able to accept ERC20 tokens. I'd recommend you take a look at Hub20 [0], which I've been working for a while and it aims to be the Ethereum analog to BTCPayServer. Currently Hub20 is also integrating with Raiden Network[1], which works in a similar way to BTC's Lightning (but again has the advantage that it can work with any erc20 token, so you can transact with stable tokens if you wish)
Hub20 is self-hosted and it does provide a way to store and manage secrets and wallet keys. For a self-hosted scenario, this means that you are always in control of your funds. I am also working on a checkout system[2] so that people can accept payments from their site in a similar way to Stripe.
I've been working to turn Hub20 into my full-time project recently, I'm always on the Matrix room [3] for any kind of support. I'm also open to consulting in the domain. Let me know if I can be of any help.
[2] https://gitlab.com/mushroomlabs/hub20/checkout20
[3] https://matrix.to/#/#hub20:communick.com
(Edit: I'm usually not one to complain and take downvotes with stride, but why would someone downvote this comment?!)
https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2021/03/31/tesla-just-helpe...
https://twitter.com/BtcpayServer/status/1376962115504906240
https://github.com/btcpayserver/btcpayserver/releases/tag/v1...
Which is exactly why no cryptocurrency has gained mainstream traction: it's solving a "problem" that doesn't exist for most people, and doing so in a way that introduces new problems.
Moving away from a duopoly that censors legal businesses it doesn't like is definitely valuable, and also something a stable coin could facilitate.
Moving money around onchain is orders of magnitudes easier than using the tradfi systems.
Most crypto firms (trading firms, VCs, protocols, etc) are exclusively using crypto to invest in deals, pay employees, etc. It really is so much better.
And I say this as someone who works in crypto for purely practical purposes (ie making money) and does not buy into the idea of crypto utopia.
As a guy who had no fear compiling Gentoo kernels 15 years ago, saying you can actually use BTC to pay for things is about a feasible as saying that 2005 was the year of the Linux desktop.
Stellar USDC is cheap to use, but Stellar seems pretty centralized to me, so there’s that issue.
Another problem is that you need to convert USDC to USD, which is yet another step and also considered a trade so there’s more bookkeeping there.
At least with regards to the fees problem we now have side chains that make really cheap to send/receive stablecoins (USDC, USDT, DAI, etc).
You can currently transact stablecoins on Polygon paying one tenth of a penny in fees [1], and there's more than US$ 1bi in stablecoin supply already being transacted there (US$ 700mi for USDC alone).
[1] https://polygonscan.com/tx/0xc260342a31648108f88e3cb5afe740a...
We are a registered business (not US-based).
Email me for more information if you want: chris@finneyfor.com
https://docs.btcpayserver.org/FAQ/Altcoin/
https://docs.btcpayserver.org/Development/Altcoins/#how-can-...
"This service creates a Checkout UI for any valid 'nano_' or 'xrb_' address, for free. You can customize further with URL params or HTTP POST body data."
Seems like most of answers here are BTC. Anything available in ETH yet? Or maybe XLM?
A Stripe for crypto would be awesome.
you can peg your crypto prices to fiat and advertise the crypto as floating that is final at the checkout. thats standard practice.
If not, then spend your valuable time hacking together some combo of scripts and open source code to watch your wallets for incoming payments.
Looking at their documentation, it seems like a kludge:
You'll need to. Unless you want to live in a permanent cash crunch, or your crypto payments never exceed a couple percent, youll be converting it.
If we are talking about just a few sales, I'd recommend something like https://request.network/en/invoicing/ .
You can also try https://bitpay.com/business if you want to integrate the payments into a customer portal.
They're working on a decentralised exchanged (DEX) to seemlessly accept payments in different currencies.
https://www.circle.com/en/usdc-multichain/algorand
https://developers.circle.com/docs/getting-started-with-the-...
USDC can of course all be swapped across various chains. Probably the cleanest and fastest crypto API payment gateway right now.
On the Algorand side there's a React toolkit for developing the ability to receive/send:
Perhaps there is a service like this already?
Stablecoins at least in the States are awaiting proper regulation. Without proper regulations you should not be using stablecoins, because once regulations are declared they will most likely pick a few leading horses to carry the standard and murder off the rest.
That said any current existing software which allows transactions with stablecoins is built upon shaky and uncertain ground. Best to wait.
However, it's fees are hefty something like $4 or 5% whichever it higher. So only makes sense if you sell things that cost $100 or more.
> directly accepting payments from customers?
Your reply:
> handles the transacations and KYC
You seemed to have missed 50% of the post you're answering to.
> as all crypto transactions now need KYC
You might want to specify what country you're thinking about, not all countries have laws around KYC and cryptocurrencies.