anotherone said:Transactions can't be blocked or frozen by validators like in centralized banking systems.
Wrong. USDT freezes a lot of wallets on an almost daily basis in millions of $ frozen. USDC is prone to the same thing. DAI was the only currency that was pegged to USD but n̶o̶w̶ (correction 30/03/2025, more info in next post) in the future it isn't out of the question to introduce freeze of such wallets too.
Sols said:Sure, if you only want to sell to people who have/use crypto and as long as the merchant is OK receiving crypto.
Reality for now is that only a fraction of customers use crypto and of that, how many view crypto just as an investment and not as a means of payment? The clientele shrinks.
Then factor in the merchant side of things. What good is USDT/USDC if your suppliers don't accept it? Can you pay salaries or does your staff expect fiat? So you have to trade a bunch of that USDT/USDC to fiat, which introduces complications and costs.
The better move is to offer both options and ensure customers have a quick and easy time making whichever payment they want to make.
This isn't just a good thing. You can effectively poison someone's wallet address by sending money to it from known criminal or sanctioned sources. Want to hurt your competition? Send money to them from known tumblers. Give them a compliance headache for weeks or months to come.
With a bank transfer or most other forms of fiat payment, you can refuse the payment before funds have cleared. Unless I've missed something, that's not supported by any blockchain. And if you have received illicit funds, you can't necessarily send it back because that could be seen as facilitating money transfer for illegal purposes.
I haven't heard of that happening, which doesn't mean it won't become a future headache.
Unfortunately, CBDC have a greater chance of mass adoption than traditional coins and tokens. Regulation and centralization offer benefits that both retail and enterprise customers expect.
Sols said:My point was that USDT/USDC isn't fiat. So by taking crypto as a form of payment, you are either adding the costs and complexities of converting to fiat or you are limiting your selection of suppliers to just those that accept USDT/USDC. I'm well aware that more and more factories, producers, et cetera in Asia, Middle East, and Africa are taking crypto. It's just something to consider in discussing whether payment processors are superfluous in a world with stable coins. Look at the whole business from end to end, not just how you take payment from customers.
Really well written outlining very real business risks. The only thing I would add is if you have an automated system for processing crypto, you can actually refund to originating address. There is more complexity if it's sent from multiple addresses and further that it is impossible to know from which address you received e.g Monero, but for USDT/USDC you can definitely return to originating address and not face any AML penalties. Now this would of course depend on the country, laws etc. but in general AML falls in the crypto processors duties, not yours as a business.
There are also issues with a lot of processors refusing random transactions even if they are low AML score. Known as the KYC scam. Bitpay are perfect example for such poor behavior and why they should be avoided like the plague. Coingate used to be good but now they follow same model.
In general USDT and USDC are worse for payments because they can be controlled directly (pre-cursors to digital dollars, yuan etc. if you ask me) and the need for processors will always exist even in the crypto world.
Last edited: Mar 30, 2025
