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We also consulted The Green Sheet Advisory Board on behind cryptocurrency want to establish with it.
this topic, asking the following questions:
3. Not currently working on a solution.
1. Have you added or are you adding cryptocurrency
acceptance to your suite of offerings, or are you 4. I can imagine Disney floating a cryptocurrency to
waiting until demand increases and/or extreme sidestep the taxing authority of the State of Florida
volatility is brought under control? Please in its bid to change the game. Can we say “"Disney
elaborate. Dollars"? Could Florida tax a currency that is not
linked to the dollar?
2. What type of crypto payments do you see working
best for your merchants? Native e-wallets that 5. I don't believe there will be a cashless society any
bypass the card brand rails? Visa- and Mastercard- time soon ... unless some rogue enemy government-
branded crypto payment cards? Something else? backed criminal enterprise floods the world with
3. What challenges have you, or do you expect near perfect US Benjamins and we have to move
you would encounter when incorporating away from the US $100 as the world standard for cash.
cryptopayments into your established products Choose your central bank currency Armageddon
and services? What solutions have you found or scenario.
would you try?
Allen Kopelman
4. Do you see additional complementary products
based on distributed ledger technology that you Nationwide Payment Systems Inc.
could incorporate to enhance your offerings? If
so, what do you envision? 1. While currently, cryptocurrency prices are down,
5. Do you think crypto payments will bring us they will rebound. Bitcoin was at approximately
closer to a cashless society? Why or why not? $20,000 in 2017 and then went down to around $3,000
in December 2018; then it rose back up to $19,000
We published the first segment of responses on June 13, in November 2020 and went to an all-time high of
2022, in issue 22:06:01's lead article, "Crypto payment almost $70,000 in October 2021, and then began
acceptance today – Part 1." This article contains the tumbling down: as of May 26, it's around $29,000.
second and final portion of our Advisory Board members'
answers. We wish to thank all who took time to share their People continue to make money and use bitcoin
insights on this topic. as a way to do business. People are getting paid in
bitcoin and other coins. With international business
being touted as a big deal in the news, using bitcoin
Mark Dunn for international payment is a good idea. It's fast and
Field Guide Enterprises LLC safe, and there are no chargebacks. It is difficult for
U.S. businesses to take a credit card from someone
in another country; the risk is high to the acquirers
1. I have been asked by several consulting clients in the USA.
about cryptocurrency acceptance. My response has
been that it is OK to take a position in cryptocur- Some people are buying and selling cryptocurrency
rency but only with money you can afford to lose, just like stocks, so there are people who are day
take some level of loss or not need to convert back trading and making money in the crypto markets.
into dollars. Cryptocurrency is not fiat currency,
namely it is not backed by any central government 2. We did get a call from a merchant who had a
or financial agency. customer with a Coinbase credit card and wanted
to know what to do. We told them it has a Visa
Although there are arguments that cryptocurrency logo; you are good to go. There are many crypto
is not subject to inflation and a central government exchanges that are issuing credit cards. The rewards
simply printing more money, the wild fluctuations for the cardholders is usually crypto.
in cryptocurrency value relative to the dollar mean
that the value put into cryptocurrency will most There are merchants out there who are using crypto
likely have to stay in that means of exchange, and wallets—and doing wallet to wallet transactions.
that doesn’t seem to be what most merchants are in- This is not a great idea. The new tax laws for
terested in. cryptocurrency/virtual currency are strict. If you
sell it in the first 12 months, you have to pay capital
2. It seems to me that merchants will put more trust gains; the tax goes down after a year.
in crypto payments affiliated with the card brands. There are services where the merchant can ask the
However, that seems to run counter to what those customer for $100. The customer scans a QR code,
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