Best Business Owner Benefits to Accepting Bitcoin Crypto Payments Now
Bitcoin Offers Many Hidden Benefits For Businesses That Accept It
Bitcoin is slowly becoming an accepted form of payment to companies worldwide, and the number keeps rising. In fact, in a report that CoinMap.org issues in March 2017, it showed 8,665 businesses globally allow their consumers to pay with Bitcoin. More importantly, this number rose 5.5% from the last report three months before.
Currently, for July 2017, the number of businesses has risen to 12,859, though the majority of those companies are based out of Japan, Korea, Singapore, Europe, the United States, and Venezuela. Those areas also happen to be the countries that have either established new regulations for crypto or are in the process of it. Many experts would assume that the loss in value of Bitcoin, which dropped from $18,000 to $6,000, would have deterred companies from accepting it. Alas, that has not been the case.
Even with the adaption for many companies to accept this cryptocurrency token, high profile businesses do not appear to be as welcoming or optimistic about the longevity of Bitcoin. Stripe, for example, has not allowed consumers to pay with Bitcoin since January, because they believe that the price volatility and lack of scalability make it limited and unsafe. Expedia, while they did not announce it, stopped allowing users to pay with Bitcoin as well.
Despite concerns about scalability, many platforms are working to correct the issues that stop many businesses from joining them. Scaling options, conversions, and stability are some of the issues that vendors will soon see long-term solutions to.
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Scaling
The biggest issue seems to be the ability of Bitcoin and other crypto assets to manage the increasing traffic with their platforms. A recent solution from Bitcoin called the Lightning Network helps to correct these problems. This solution expands the capacity of the current blockchain, which creates lower fees and less lag time between transactions.
Rather than putting small transactions on the main blockchain, they are placed “off chain,” so as not to disrupt the flow of bigger transactions. They are bundled together to be verified by smaller companies, and then put into the blockchain in a single block.
Conversions
Though Bitcoin is highly popular, there are many consumers that prefer to use Altcoins, which can be due to a multitude of reasons. However, they have the option of converting their coins to the more-usable Bitcoin with the use of an atomic swap. This swap will let them instantly trade out their Altcoins to Bitcoin, but they will not lose value.
Supersede Competition
Anyone that wants to thrive in their industry has to have some sort of advantage over their competing companies, but there is a certain point that fiat-paying customers grow tired of ads and promotions. However, there are people around the world that keep their funds in cryptocurrency, rather than a bank account. Businesses that decide to accept it open an entirely new door for those customers.
There is no need to let go of accepting fiat currency but adding on cryptocurrency will broaden the audience that a company can serve.
International Community
Every industry and company have certain limitations that keep them from certain parts of the world, and the biggest example of that is the different currencies. However, Bitcoin remains decentralized, so it can be used in any country without major conversions and high rates. Consumers that operate with crypto still consider themselves an elite group, and anyone that accepts Bitcoin will be welcomed by that large consumer base.
Niche Markets
Bitcoin and Altcoin users have a variety of niche industries that they thrive in. Every business has their specific market that they thrive in, and the crypto industry has the ability to zone in on the right audience. It is easy to get demographic information about the type of money that users keep, which helps businesses determine what products they gravitate towards.
For example, consumers that hold STEEM tokens prefer to spend their crypto on digital content, while NEO holders prefer to remain within the Chinese market.
Potential Concerns
While all of these efforts from the crypto community help with the majority of issues that big businesses worry about, there is one thing that has yet to be changed – the volatility of the market. Since the value of Bitcoin rises and falls like the stock market, the total revenue generated by it can be hard to predict. The only real way to prevent this issue is with immediate liquidation, withdrawing it as fiat currency.
Summary
The crypto world is already changing economies worldwide, changing the way that consumers both invest and spend their money. Technology has continued to evolve, which means that the industry is far from the end of their progress. As these crypto tokens become more evolved and competitive, then more businesses should be drawn to their acceptance.
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