Bitcoin, over its 10-year course, has evolved in many ways. In that time span, people have started to find creative ways to use bitcoin for more than just investment opportunities.
People are buying and selling bitcoin for the purpose of having a steady income, wealth preservation, and remittances (despite the fluctuation in the value of bitcoin). One of the biggest real-use cases that bitcoin has is its ability to make payments much easier—especially if you’re sending money abroad. It’s also very useful in the e-commerce side of things as business owners are starting to accept bitcoin as payment for their goods and services. Having a bitcoin wallet is like having a financial passport—allowing the unbanked to get the services they deserve.
Bitcoin’s successors—a long list of over 2,000 cryptocurrencies—are also following in its lead by making payments much easier. And now, more and more business owners are starting to accept these new and exciting payment methods. The question is, should you start accepting cryptocurrency as well?
The pros of cryptocurrency in the workplace
Accepting cryptocurrency as payment for your goods and services has many advantages, but it also comes with its own set of disadvantages. First, let’s touch on the advantages.
Security
Most cryptocurrencies out there are very secure. Take bitcoin as an example: bitcoin transactions are some of the most secure transactions in the world. Every transaction is verified by the miners and then it’s recorded on a public ledger for everyone to see. This public ledger is also unhackable as there are several complex cryptographic hashes that protect the ledger from being tampered with or manipulated.
Widening your reach
As mentioned earlier, bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies help immenselywhen it comes to sending payments cross-country. Traditional banking systems and money transfer operators are often more expensive, they take longer, and they’re harder to find if you’re living in an underdeveloped country. The extra fees and long waiting times can hinder people from actually purchasing something from a store like yours. If they find out that they will be able to pay with fewer fees at a faster rate, it might entice them to buy more goods and services.
Since you can practically send cryptocurrency from anywhere and at any time, your market will be a lot bigger—spanning many different countries (as well as different time zones). The barriers between countries will be taken down thus expanding your market.
Fewer fees
Cryptocurrency transactions circumvent a lot of the fees that most traditional payments do. Traditional payments have a lot of fees that often weigh down on a consumer. Cryptocurrency transactions have little to no fees and are an extremely viable option for businesses—especially ones that are primarily run on the internet.
PR
Accepting cryptocurrency as payment for your goods and services is a good way to spread awareness for your brand. If you start accepting cryptocurrency as payment, you can use it as a milestone or landmark for your business, allowing you to build a whole marketing campaign around it. It’s a new kind of marketing that will target a newer generation of customers—cryptocurrency nuts like ourselves just happy to use our coins for something other than investment.
Payment methods like cryptocurrency can also be good for your brand. If you have the right product or service payable via bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, it could be a perfect match. For example, if you’re a tech company, accepting cryptocurrency as payment is a way to show that your company is progressive and forward-thinking. It could be a great selling point for your business since it could show that you’re willing to adapt with the times. Even if you aren’t in the tech industry, anything could be a great selling point with marketing at the right angle.
The cons of cryptocurrency in the workplace
Despite the advantages mentioned above, cryptocurrency as a payment method comes with its own set of disadvantages:
Price
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are notorious for their price fluctuations. If you start accepting bitcoin as payment and then the value of bitcoin goes down later that day, it will result in a loss for you.
Because you can’t eliminate the volatility of cryptocurrencies, there are other things you can do to counterattack this disadvantage. One example is the use of peer-to-peer marketplaces. If you’re constantly trading, the price of the coin won’t matter. Let’s say you’ve just accepted 1 BTC for a certain service.
Upon receiving the BTC in your bitcoin wallet, you can immediately trade it on Paxful—one of the biggest peer-to-peer bitcoin marketplaces—to change its form. On peer-to-peer marketplaces, there are hundreds of payment methods so it’s really up to you when it comes to what you want to convert it into. You can convert it into online money via PayPal, you can trade it for a bank transfer, or you can even exchange it for a discounted gift card.
When it comes to countering volatility, research is key. Make sure that you stay updated on current cryptocurrency events and prices—it’ll save you money.
Complexity
Not everyone is educated on how cryptocurrency transactions work. To some, it can seem a little intimidating so you’ll have to educate your customers on how to do it first. As a business owner, you have to make sure that each and every one of your customers are guided on how to make these transactions work. That means a lot of research and guidance on your part.
Regulatory uncertainty
Despite it being 10 years old, some governments are still unsure of how to regulate bitcoin. If bitcoin is being treated that way, what more its successors? Even bitcoin is still in its infancy stage. In this case, business owners will have to be adaptable to when governments start regulating cryptocurrencies.
Know your priorities
Now that you know the advantages and disadvantages of accepting cryptocurrency as payment, you’ll be able to clearly assess the need for it. Ultimately, it all depends on what kind of business you run and what your priorities are. In most cases, accepting cryptocurrency as payment isn’t a make-or-break decision for businesses. If you have more pressing matters to attend to, you should deal with them first by all means. You should only consider accepting cryptocurrency as payment if everything in your business is already in order. This should only be seen as a way to expandyour business—not outright fix it.
If you decide to accept cryptocurrency as payment, make sure that you do your research. Don’t make any rash decisions because when it comes to anything cryptocurrency, knowledge is power. Although buying and selling bitcoin is new and exciting, rash decisions could end up in losses for you and your business. Always be careful out there—it’s a tricky industry but it’s quite exciting when you get the hang of it.
Photo by André François McKenzie on Unsplash
