Can a Sri Lankan business accept Bitcoin? Yes You can.
How do I take payment in Bitcoin?
Basic level is done by looking at the BTC/USD price of your selling value (Or BTC/LKR via google, not too accurate because of the Cabral $ rate) (You can see the BTC /USD realtime price like in Coinmarketcap, the amount is different in each exchange, average It’s okay to check the amount), then See how much BTC/Sats should you charge based on your Product/Service price (via a Basic calculator) to your bitcoin wallet.
You can also create a business account in a service like Bitpay, CoinPayments net, reroute through transaction and accept.If you take it as advance, you can integrate a BTC wallet and create a custom Payment Gateway, but you should go there after a transaction volume is created.
Most of the time BTC collectors don’t sell, so they do HODL, Save or Staking. So I keep the BTC I get in that wallet and put it on savings/stakings platforms.But if you want to sell right now you can swap to BTC USDT/USD via CEX/DEX. If you want to get LKR afterwards you can sell at P2P Market.
As a business what is the advantage of accepting bitcoin ?
See that the advantage of business people nowadays is that there is a low market. That means there are many bitcoiners in the world now and they don’t believe in FIAT currency.
So they are trying to make payments with bitcoin as much as they can. Many tourists who want to pay like this can come to Sri Lanka in the future.
So they are looking for business in Sri Lankan that they can pay through bitcoin. This is where in Sri Lanka, the business that enter this first will get a benefit. (Early adopters) because bitcoiners are looking for them.
If you take it for a long time, a time will come. Now making bitcoin payments will become mainstream like accepting card payment.
Then you will have to fix the payment infastructure related to that anyway.Plus you add right now the value of Bitcoin/sats will one day increase about 5 times when BTC is like $200,000. (This price hike and volatility is a different story). Let’s talk about it later ).
Do Sri Lankan law approve taking Bitcoin payments ?
Legal provisions have not yet been made about accepting bitcoin for a Sri Lankan business. Recently Namal intervened and studied about it. He put up a committee to create the necessary framework.
They might be still studying about Bitcoin and blockchain related business (mining companies, payment services, investment services) if we integrate the economy of Sri Lanka. They haven’t given a proper update on it yet.
But I think Sri Lanka will somehow try to allow this as the other developed countries in the world accept the use of bitcoin. (some countries already accept as a legal tender, some countries accept as legal currency unit in the country, some have applied capital gains tax and approved trading, other countries have even taken ATMs and created environment for bitcoin business. )
Currently the laws of the country have been made to align with the current FIAT currency. Next generation of money, otherwise our central bank hasn’t created a policy that facilitate crypto currency. (On one side we are there as a country behind. Even though monetary policy comes like that, you can’t reverse it in the evening after putting gazette in the morning. So it’s better to take the time and do the right thing).
But Central Bank doesn’t say these are illegal (a grey area, not legal, but not illegal). Finally, the notice given by the Central Bank on Digital Assests (including cryptocurrency)’Maybe some transactions through cryptocurrency can be illegal (like money loundering, drugs, arms dealing), at such an end those transactions may be against the current financial laws of Sri Lanka.
And this cryptocurrency is a highly volatile thing, so the Central Bank does not recommend it to the general public, so we are not responsible for other problems using crypto currency’Like a notice to save the body, except that it is not illegal.
On the other hand, if you accept payment through bitcoin and keep the original purpose of Bitcoin in the decentralized form (In a non custodial wallet) your funds will be safe, if Central Bank does not accept, no problem for now.
That money can’t be tracked, if it doesn’t say your wallet address it’s just a blockchain wallet, can’t find who’s. So if someday Sri Lankan government tells you that the use of bitcoin is banned in Sri Lankan, there is no problem with the funds in your wallet, you can sell P2P in the market and make rupees when you need. Even though one country says no to bitcoin, BTC won’t be lost in the world, now it’s too late.
Credit Ravi Twitter