It would be *amazing* if the greatest obstacle to freedom was not enough wallets, nodes, DEX’s, E2EE messengers, digital cash options.
It’s not.
The greatest obstacle now is merchant adoption. A marketplace of buyers and sellers that wears its desire for free speech and free trade on its sleeve.
Accept #Monero. Spend Monero. Put some of your savings in Monero.
If we use it, we win.
#freedom #freedomtech
#XMRBazaar is very good. But, XMR is a long, long, long way from being accepted at your favorite restaurant.
Square is in the lead for any sort of crypto merchant adoption, and they are #BTC only. Worse, they are #Lightning only. Even worse is the complicity with KYC & custody.
Square is very convenient and offers many options for merchants to accept Bitcoin and Fiat, with their selling point being no tx fees (introductory). With all of these Cadillac features, there is still limited adoption by merchants.
The biggest obstacles with crypto acceptance are: volatility, complexity & convertability. Most business owners have their hands full just running the business, and accepting crypto will not increase their profits nearly enough to dedicate the time to making it work.
It's easier, for those with an interest, to accept fiat, then convert to crypto.
#Bitcoin and #Lightning is a hard dealbreaker. It’s like KYC++ with terrible usability, high fees, and wild volatility.
#Monero offers the following benefits to merchants:
* easy to set up and use
* low fees (much lower than legacy bank/credit cards, Stripe, etc.)
* low volatility (its price is not driven by the hollow promises of orange-coloured presidents and laser-eyed ETF hodlers hoping to make easy money)
* battle tested, strong privacy for buyer and seller
* marketing, i.e. some buyers actively choose merchants because they accept Monero
Of course, a merchant still needs to care enough about the freedom, privacy, and cost benefits to accept the tradeoffs of a more complicated tax return - but thankfully many already do.
I think online merchants are an easier sell than brick and mortar for now. Indeed I already pay for most of my core (digital) services with it.
Regardless of the hurdles to overcome, merchant adoption is everything.
