As quite a few of you know, Mrs. Denmarkguy and I are the proprietors of a small independent art gallery here in our hometown.
In our aspirations to be "with the program" and generally wanting to publicize and promote the whole idea of cryptocurrencies as something worthy and valid, we're in the process of deciding on the best possible way to accept both Bitcoin and Steem/SBD at our small shop.
It Should Be EASY, Right?
On the surface, that shouldn't be very hard to do, one would think. But there are some considerations that don't exactly meet the eye.
Steem/SBD is easy enough-- we already have the 
Accepting Bitcoin is not as easy. Not because we don't like Bitcoin, but because suddenly the relatively high BTC fees and the very long confirmation times aren't that well suited to a retail transaction that may only be the equivalent of 30-50 USD. Nobody's going to stand around for 90 minutes in a store to wait for a Bitcoin transaction confirmation. Would you? Probably not...
The best option, then, might be to use a payment processing service, instead. These are basically the cryptoverse's equivalent of a credit card processor for businesses. It costs a little more, but they take care of the heavy lifting and guarantees and promises and things... so we can "just do business."
CoinPayments.net Is one of the Most Popular Solutions... Wait... WHAT???
Ooopps! Appears that's not an option around here!
I have briefly read some reviews of some of the current services, and one of the most versatile seems to be CoinPayments.net because they process for merchants and they accept a large number of coins, above and beyond just Bitcoin and Steem/SBD.
Seems like a win-win, because as the BTC stream gets more and more costly and congested, odds are other alt coins will take over as more "functional" on a day-to-day basis.
So I go to the CoinPayments web site... and the above is a screen shot of what I get!
And as you can see from the second screen shot below, I am in "very fine company" here in the state of Washington, along with North Korea and New York.
Wow... in very fine company with NORTH KOREA...
A Bit Of Back Story... Not That it Makes Things Better...
So why did I get this message? Is Washington state "anti cryptocurrency?"
Not exactly...
Not long ago, the State of Washington legalized marijuana.
Actually, weed has been legal here for some years, but people needed to go to their doctor and get a "prescription card" (aka "green card") and then buy their weed from an authorized dispensary. Fine.
Well, that changed a couple of years back, and now anyone "of age" can walk into any "rec shop" and buy weed, subject to certain limitations.
But a "problem" (for the state) developed because "legal weed" also implied that the magic herb became a taxed and controlled substance. And a great many growers and dealers started bypassing paying those taxes by trading in (largely anonymous and untraceable) cryptocurrencies, rather than fiat.
In response, the state didn't exactly outlaw cryptos... but they made it so that anyone trading in cryptos (and especially "market makers" like exchanges) would need to provide all manners of personal identifying information.
I already experienced the effect of this once before, when my Poloniex account was suspended early last year because I was a resident of Washington state, and Poloniex refused to comply with the state's ID requirements.
And that's the same thing happening here: CoinPayments is refusing to comply with Washington state's regulations, instead censoring out anyone residing in the state.
So it appears one option is off the table...
What do YOU think? Does it surprise you that such a "censorship" is happening? What would YOU do, as a crypto trader in the state of Washington... or any place with similar regulations? Does this seem unreasonable to you... legislation with a very specific target now affecting EVERYone? Leave a comment-- share your experiences-- be part of the conversation! If you think this is a topic that deserves more attention and debate, please resteem!
(As usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for Steemit)
Created at 171212 14:38 PDT