VANCOUVER, BC – OCTOBER 29: Gabriel Scheare uses the world’s first bitcoin ATM on October 29, 2013 … [+]
A new wave of Bitcoin adoption seems to come about every year. Sometimes, it’s retail investors pushing the wave forward – other times, it’s institutional support, and lastly, it has been nation-states that have adopted it. Yet, a powerful wave of strong sustained support is businesses that decide to operate on a Bitcoin standard: those that choose to accept Bitcoin for their goods and services, and use it to sustain themselves.
Matt Hill is the founder and CEO of Start9, which is trying to take sovereign computing to the next level. Start9 does this in three ways: by offering a server that comes preloaded for people to use and install in their homes, creating and distributing Start OS, a free and open-source operating system for people trying to run their own servers, and offering an application marketplace for those running their own servers. Recently, Start OS has been launched for clearnet connections, which is normally how most people browse the Internet, further expanding the userbase and reach of Start9.
Start9 uses BTCPay, its own Lightning node, to accept payments in Bitcoin. They estimate that about one in six sales now is done in Bitcoin.
“So BTCPay is a wonderful piece of technology – I think it’s underappreciated if that’s possible at this point, but I do. Definitely underused – a lot of merchants reach for these more third party custodial solutions like Coinbase Commerce[…]. So they just do the thing that they know which is reach out to a service provider and say, hey, do this for me and I’ll pay you a fee, not realizing that it undermines a significant portion of the value proposition that Bitcoin provides.”
As Leo Weese, author of nodeacademy.org, puts it: “the Lightning Network allows anybody to join. To run a node—or rather—become a node requires only minimal equipment, skills and capital. That anybody can be their own payment processor and bank is a powerful idea that keeps the system competitive and moral hazards at bay.” This same logic applies to the wave of businesses that might be interested in taking payment in Bitcoin and maintaining custody over their funds. They might be one BTCPay Server instance away from that.
Matt continues – the goal isn’t just to accept payment in Bitcoin, but to use it to operate: “[…] I have stated publicly before that our goal as a company is to be on a Bitcoin standard in the coming years – to be completely on a Bitcoin standard – to only pay our employees and contractors and partners in Bitcoin, to only accept Bitcoin as payment for our products and to buy from vendors all of our raw materials in Bitcoin. […] We want to live in the world we’re helping create. […]” as Matt from Start9 put it.
Other businesses in the Bitcoin space are doing just that. Coinkite founder NVK has commented on how the recent dip in Bitcoin prices amounted to a sale – Coinkite sells Bitcoin security products like hardware wallets and has offered a 5% discount if paid in Bitcoin. Bitcoin custody companies like Casa also offer Bitcoin payment options. This is a maturation of the current drive towards Bitcoin as a financial product, held in trust by a custodian. These Bitcoin businesses think about a Bitcoin standard in a fundamentally different way.
“[…] You know, we’re not an investment company. It’s not like we’re speculating on Bitcoin, we really do view it as a monetary asset that’s better than the dollar and so, when it comes to what we hold, we try to hold as much Bitcoin as we can and only keep enough dollars in the bank to take care of – really the next two months. Most of everything that we have as a company is in Bitcoin, and we just keep enough dollars to survive and usually that is taken care of by our cash inflows from product sales. So we’re trying hard to get on a Bitcoin standard, and I expect that we will be there in the next few years. I don’t know how long a few is. Could be two, could be six, but I think we’ll get there.” as Matt puts it.
This wave of businesses adopting a Bitcoin standard isn’t just confined to Bitcoin either. In the past, Andy Yen of Proton, the provider of private email, storage and VPN solutions, has also indicated that they’re able and willing to take Bitcoin. To this day, Proton maintains an option to pay in BTC. VPS providers that allow you to host your own Internet content/servers such as Lunanode also take Bitcoin and encourage the use of their services to host BTCPay server instances. Other virtual businesses that take Bitcoin:
- Mullvad VPN, a privacy-focused VPN solution.
- silent.link, an eSIM provider
- Kagi, a search engine without ads.
- Namecheap is a domain name registar that takes Bitcoin.
- Alza, the Czech Republic’s largest online retailer, takes Bitcoin.
Retail businesses around the world are also starting to take Bitcoin, blending the physical and virtual world – with hotspots in Prague, Vancouver, Rolante, and more. Businesses like Sweetsats offer maple syrup and honey, and are Bitcoin-only, offer an example of physical-meets-virtual businesses that have adopted a Bitcoin standard. Through Zaprite, a bunch of physical businesses as varied as a dental clinic to a shop that sells spices accept Bitcoin, showing that physical businesses are slowly also coming online to the first steps towards a Bitcoin standard.
As Bitcoin continues to evolve, more businesses may just aspire to that Bitcoin standard: receiving payment in Bitcoin, paying their employees in Bitcoin, and holding Bitcoin in reserve. In a world that assumes constant inflation will eventually eat savings up, this could be a sea change in the way businesses operate.