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Comment by defiamazing | Hacker News Reader

I don’t get why they don’t just use Bitcoin or Ethereum.

Mainly because your employees, suppliers, and landlord have no desire to be paid in Bitcoin.

What does that matter? You can convert Bitcoin into cash. But then you can do that in an undisclosed location at your leisure instead of keeping a mountain of cash in your publicly advertised storefront location and becoming a huge robbery target.

Also, it doesn't seem like it would be that hard to find someone to accept it as payment, since they can convert it to cash too. And the sort of landlords/suppliers/employees willing to do business with a dispensary seem like exactly the sort who would accept Bitcoin.

No sane person uses Bitcoin as a currency because it is a fundamentally unsound ponzi scheme for suckers. I don't want my salary to be subject to the vagaries and manipulations of the Bitcoin exchange rate.

If you don't want to hold Bitcoin or be exposed to price changes, you can set your hourly rate in dollars, be paid at the current exchange rate and immediately convert it back into dollars. The advantage of this over being paid in physical cash is that it's electronic and then you're not carrying two weeks salary in physical cash on your person for somebody to mug you.

two weeks salary in physical cash

How expensive do you think weed is? You can get baked every day for two weeks for $50, probably less

We're talking about their employees, not their customers. If you can't get a bank account, you can't pay employees with direct deposit.

There are plenty of sane people who use Bitcoin as a currency. Making blithe moral declarations like this doesn't spark curiosity and is incredibly tired after so many years (you're not the first).

"Unsound ponzi scheme" could just as well be applied to any fiat currency. It has all the same rules (early entrants are more privileged in "the game" and can invest to out-perform younger players). It is very odd to hear people applying such qualitative judgments like this when the alternative is a currency that is actively debased by its issuers. Or do you think the inflation we've all suffered under isn't a problem?

All of the legit Bitcoin-to-cash orgs will report that to the IRS, and then you're back to square one: what do you do with that wad of cash? Orgs that don't report to the IRS probably aren't giving you a good exchange rate, and you're still left holding the bag afterward.

If you're going through all that hassle, it's much easier just to be a cash-only business in the first place.

> you're back to square one: what do you do with that wad of cash?

Keep it in a safe somewhere undisclosed instead of a retail storefront everybody knows is holding a ton of cash, or spend it.

The point is that it moves the cash from the publicly visible location to somewhere nobody knows to rob.

And for all that convenience, each BTC transaction costs only $7 !

So use Bitcoin Cash or any of the other alternatives with lower transaction fees.

The transaction fee for a cash transaction is $0 and no time for the consumer.

That is the benchmark you are competing against.

Cash transactions require you to make change and are a target for theft. This is neither free nor zero time.

> Cash transactions require you to make change and are a target for theft. This is neither free nor zero time.

That's why I specified "for the consumer", who is typically the person that is going to make a purchasing decision.

Using crypto for dispensaries has been tried, and it hasn't gained traction in the many years that its been an option. If you introduce friction (by forcing people to transact using a novel payment form), you are going to lose customers. The fact that the very few dispensaries that accept crypto continue to accept cash and debit should tell you what consumers like.

> That's why I specified "for the consumer"

It takes the same amount of time to make change for the consumer as the store. Or more, because now you have to wait while they make change for the person in front of you, then for you on top of that.

And nobody wants to be at a store which is more likely to get robbed. Not only do you lose your cash, you could lose your life.

> The fact that the very few dispensaries that accept crypto continue to accept cash and debit should tell you what consumers like.

There are multiple consumers. If you can get half of them to use Bitcoin, you have half as much cash on hand to lose in a robbery, and on top of that half as much incentive for someone to rob you to begin with.

So if I as a consumer want to buy weed:

I show up and convert cash to bitcoin, presumably losing some of its value to exchange fees.

Pay the merchant my bitcoin, who then has to convert it back to cash losing more of its value to fees so that he can pay all of his staff, suppliers, utilities, etc...

Why not just skip the bitcoin step and save time and money?

Because you don't have cash to begin with, you have money in a bank account, which you have to convert to something else to pay the dispensary. Converting it via cash instead of Bitcoin just makes it easier for you to be mugged.

To be honest, I’m far more concerned about crypto scams, wallet hacks, etc, than I am worried about getting mugged for ~$100 at the dispensary parking lot.

That seems like a weird set of priorities? If someone hacks your crypto wallet with $100 in it, you could lose $100. If someone mugs you when you have $100 in your wallet, you could lose $100 and get shot.

Crypto scams are... completely unrelated? It's like being worried about using a bank account because there are ponzi schemes that use bank transfers.

Nobody wants to stand around for several minutes waiting for transactions to clear.

Ethereum average block time is 12s (with low variance) and high chance of getting tx included in the next block. Still too long for a point-of-sale payment, but its feasible. Then there's fees that are too high on L1 (several dollars minimum).

L2s fix this (~immediate settlement, cents in fees), but it's another layer and another account for users to manage (which is annoying).

Those two specifically have super high transaction fees which basically kills their use as normal currencies.

https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/transactionfees-btc-eth...

That's just because crypto shills just don't get obvious facts about reality, not because obvious facts about reality aren't objectively and provably true. That's just the way cults and get-rich-quick pyramid schemes and fraud work, so stop being a shill and wondering why nobody believes or respects you, because there's a lot you don't get.

Because you can't yet purchase electricity/internet with bitcoin (directly).

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