This is the fourth of a five-part series on cryptocurrencies as well as their uses benefits for the Second Amendment community. Read part one here. Part two is here. Part three is here.
By Rob McNealy
Accepting crypto payments in your business — firearms related or otherwise — isn’t hard. All you need is a piece of software called a payment gateway that’s compatible with your shopping cart software.
Payment gateways are a type of software that works within the shopping cart to process the payment when a customer hits the “buy” button. The gateways for crypto payments are very similar to the ones that process credit cards, except they are talking directly to a crypto wallet located on the blockchain instead of talking to a bank.
Payment gateways plugins exist for all the major shopping cart applications. I will focus on the open source shopping carts such as WooCommerce, PrestaShop and OpenCart for this article. The major shopping cart company hates the 2A industry (and freedom) so they aren’t worthy of further discussion.
Crypto payment gateways come in both self-hosted options, like BTCPay Server, or third-party services like Forging Block. There are several other prominent third-party crypto payment gateways providers like CoinPayments and BitPay, but their terms of service prohibit the sale of firearms.
Self-Hosted Payment Gateways Pros and Cons
The pros of self-hosted third-party payment gateways, like BTCPay Server is that they are the most decentralized and thus offer the least risk of being deplatformed. In additional, they have zero to low additional fees.
The cons of self-hosted third-party payment gateways are that they are much harder to configure and manage because you must host and run a literal server. Additionally, BTCPay Server can support some alt coins, but the community behind BTCPay Server is primarily focused on Bitcoin. Since BTCPay Server is a decentralized project, support is limited.
Third Party Payment Gateways Pros and Cons
The pro of a third party 2A-friendly payment gateways like Forging Block, is that they are a multi-coin payment gateway, so retailers using their gateway have the option to accept many different cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, TUSC, and RavenCoin. And since you don’t have to host and run a server, they offer easier setup and integration.
The cons of third-party payment gateways are that some charge additional fees for each transaction. The providers are middlemen. That also increases the risk of political deplatforming if they change their terms of service.
At the time of this writing, ForgingBlock isn’t charging an additional fee to process TUSC transactions.
Read part five in this series here.
This is the fourth of a five-part series on cryptocurrencies as well as their uses benefits for the Second Amendment community. Read part one here. Part two is here. Part three is here.
Rob McNealy is an entrepreneur, 2A supporter and co-founder of TUSC, a 2A-friendly crypto payments and NFT project, and Krappy Art, an NFT and digital art collective. Rob lives in the Salt Lake City area with his wife, four kids and their ferocious guard doodle. You can listen to his podcast or follow him on Minds and Twitter.