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Overstock will become the first US company to pay taxes in cryptocurrency as mass global adoption prospects strengthen.

Major online retailer Overstock is set to pay Ohio state business taxes in Bitcoin, the first company in the US to receive that distinction. The US state treasurer currently maintains a portal allowing cryptocurrency payments for tax obligations. Overstock, a company long known for its advocacy for cryptocurrency, began accepting Bitcoin payments in 2014, and now accepts a wide variety of coins, including Dash, stating that accepting digital payments is much more efficient than traditional payment processors.

Tax compliance with cryptocurrency has historically posed a particularly prickly problem, with a lack of clear guidelines in many administrations, increasing the necessity of strategic partnerships with crypto accounting firms such as Node40. The move by administrations such as Ohio’s treasurer to accept cryptocurrencies directly, and major companies such as Overstock eagerly participating, spells a comping simplification of compliance challenges.

Cryptocurrency adoption nears tipping point levels, particularly in Venezuela

The introduction of cryptocurrency tax payments by Overstock illustrate the proximity of wide adoption of the technology. Near the forefront of mass adoption is Dash, which currently claims over 4,700 known merchants globally as listed on DiscoverDash. A present 2,554 of these are located in Venezuela, which has experienced a cryptocurrency boom in the wake of a severe currency and economic crisis. Included in the Dash-accepting merchants in Venezuela are local franchises of globally-recognized chains such as Church’s Chicken, Papa John’s, Subway, and others. The combination of well-known brands and certain government administrations accepting cryptocurrency promise to increase recognition and pave the way for mass adoption.

Technical challenges to mass adoption are still ahead

While current barriers to usefulness of cryptocurrency as a payment method include mainly adoption-based limitations, future challenges may focus on technical aspects as the technology grows to support a large user base. Foremost of these concerns is scaling, with industry leader Bitcoin struggling to pass 400,000 daily transactions on-chain due to a limited 1mb block size, while exploring off-chain solutions such as the lightning network. Bitcoin Cash set a record of about 2.1 million transactions per day through stress tests, while Dash managed over 3 million on a 2mb block size, with Bitcoin SV reaching 4.4 million a week later on a 128mb block size. Being able to sufficiently maintain this level is key to supporting millions to billions of global users.

Additionally, a smooth merchant experience matters for a widely-used payment method. Dash InstantSend transactions provide fully-settled transactions in 1.3 seconds, and while optional at the moment, the feature will be applied by default to all transactions with the implementation of the recently-completed 0.13 release. Finally, network security likely ranks high on merchant and consumer priorities, increasing the importance of ChainLocks, a solution to prevent against 51% mining attacks scheduled for the upcoming 0.14 release.