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Crypto payments in big box retailers sounds cool but...

Let me preface this by saying - I am 100% for the mass adoption of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. I will always be bullish on web3 technology and will always have a very forward-thinking attitude about it. I run a crypto project, after all... Be it small, it is still a crypto project. So now that we've established that I fully support the mass adoption of cryptocurrency... Let's take a different look at the state of things. There's not a lot of really big retailers that accept cryptocurrency for payments, especially in store. In fact, I can't think of one that does actually accept cryptocurrency worldwide in store. If you can, please link it!

That being said, a couple days ago Walmart revealed their focus on cryptocurrency as a form of payments and it got me thinking. This is not really a shocking piece of news, though because I wrote about this very thing about 10 months ago from a similar perspective. There's so many factors that are standing in the way of being able to spend your Bitcoin at Walmart. Let's be real here - the only way Bitcoin would ever be fast enough to serve as an actual method of payment in a retail store is if they use Lightning. Lightning has its own hurdles though, and I'm not gunna try to explain why the odds of it being used are slim.

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Even thinking past the speed, the fees are going to detract a lot of users as well. Bitcoin is expensive, Ethereum is expensive, and realistically any fee-less chain is going to be too expensive for this. Clearly with Hive, we have a solution with HBD and super fast, feeless transactions. I'm just talking about the more well known cryptocurrencies that you always see in the news. You're not hearing about Hive being bought by the President of El Salvador or bring added to PayPal. Boy that would be lovely, but I think we have a long way to go on that front.

My point here is that the few cryptocurrencies that your average user has even heard of are far too slow and expensive for this type of use case. You need a fast, free blockchain capable of handling millions of transactions per second if you want to scale to big box retailers. It also has to be extremely easy, which is definitely not the case for a lot of these well-known blockchains and cryptocurrencies. To us crypto nerds, it's as simple as opening an app, scanning a QR code, and waiting for a confirmation. To your mom or grandmother, that's the most complicated shit you could ever ask them to do.

You can forget about grandma going shopping in the metaverse too. You gunna strap a VR headset to her head and watch her flail around asking how to do shit for an hour while she tries to shop? I doubt it. It would be easier to just get in the car and drive to your local Wally World for some good old fashioned dreadful shopping. My point here is not to take a dump on the idea of cryptocurrency payments in big box retailers, it's more to take a look at it from a different angle. From a guy that is extremely bullish on all of this, and not an expert on any of it... We're a long way off from this.

I didn't even get into the tax liabilities this creates for both the customer and the business if you live in a place like the United States. Every single transaction becomes taxable for both the business and customer since crypto is treated as property, not money. You don't have to think that hard before you realize that Bitcoin is not going to be the default payment method in retailers any time soon. It will eventually become an option, I'd imagine. It's just going to be a loooooong time before we see that. What are your thoughts?

Article written by: @l337m45732 AKA 0xNifty.nft

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