The Dallas Mavericks, a National Basketball Association team, will be accepting Bitcoin as payment for game tickets this upcoming season.

If this surprises you, I would wager that by this time in two short years accepting cryptocurrencies will have become more the standard than a surprise. I give this prediction based off of a simple theory: It takes only one.

It takes only one team, one theater, one cinema, one major retailer, one restaurant chain, or one airline to see the benefits of using Bitcoin and/or Litecoin positively affect their bottom line. The Mavericks will be that ‘one’ in the NBA, as their owner, Mark Cuban is invested in Bitcoin. And as we all know, Mark doesn’t just invest in anything. He only invests in what he believes will make him money.

The reasons for adoption of cryptocurrencies in the entertainment ticket space is the same argument being used in many other sectors of business:

Above reasons for accepting Cryptocurrencies as a payment option provided by Aliant Payments, a credit card processing and merchant services provider. One of the first to offer cryptocurrency solutions.

Absolutely ZERO data breaches

According to market analysts from Juniper Research, data breaches through debit and credit cards cost organizations throughout the world a total of over $2.1 trillion by 2019 (https://www.itgovernanceusa.com/blog/global-cost-of-data-breaches-will-rise-to-2-1-trillion-by-2019/).

In 2015, Target reached a $39 million settlement with a number of US banks due to a data breach that affected nearly 40 million bank customers. The banks, who were serviced by MasterCard and held the Personally Identifiable Information (PII) of their customers, had to compensate their card holders. They, in turn, went after Target for compensation.

Oh, but that’s not all. Target also had to give $67 million to Visa for the same data breach, as well as $10 million to customers who went after them in a federal class action lawsuit. All in all, over $172 million dollars and countless hours of time lost in litigation were the cost of not being able to protect the personal information of those who had made purchases in any Target store in 2013.

Truly decentralized cryptocurrencies are void of any possible data breach. It can potentially save anyone accepting Litecoin or Bitcoin millions of dollars annually, depending upon the amount of transactions they perform. Just this fact alone should pique every company’s interest. Not only does it save an organization money, but it negates one of the greatest concerns facing anyone in today’s society, the theft of their identity through any physical or online purchase.

Speed Is Everything

Credit card transactions take days to finalize. This allows for the possibility of fraud pullbacks, and delays the payment completion process. Debit card transactions take up to an average of 2–3 business days. Credit card transactions can hang out there in payment purgatory for up to 5 business days. This is no longer conducive to today’s fast paced commerce world.

Businesses have a need. A need…for speed

Litecoin and Bitcoin? Payments are completed at the point of purchase within 1–5 seconds (same as a credit or debit card), cannot be pulled back once the payment is made, and take up to 2.5 minutes of full processing time once commenced for Litecoin. Bitcoin payments also occur immediately, cannot be pulled back, and full processing time once commenced is set at 10 minutes.

Litecoin and Bitcoin are now also implementing an even quicker and cheaper way to send and receive transactions through an innovation called the Lightning Network. Provided by Lightning Labs, sender and receiver can open ultra fast payment channels, ANYWHERE ON THE PLANET, that can cost a mere fraction of the total amount sent. A recent example of this is a transaction totaling $99 million of Litecoin sent from one crypto wallet to another within seconds, incurring a processing fee of only forty (40) cents. With Lightning Network, the processing time is essentially bypassed and the 40 cent cost of the original transfer would seem exhorbitant!

This is a night and day difference compared to today’s standards, and for anyone who hasn’t transferred or used cryptos for purchases before, they may not even believe that is possible. But it is very possible. It is mostly due to the blockchain technology and other complementary innovations used for each of these two coins. Never having to worry about payment pullbacks ever again sounds pretty nice, as does less time used during accounting and auditing.

You may have heard of Bitcoin, but what is Litecoin?

Bitcoin has been around since its inception in 2008. It is the most widely known cryptocurrency in the world, and is the gold standard by which all others are measured. As a matter of fact, when talking about Bitcoin and Litecoin together, many within both communities will liken Bitcoin as crypto’s equivalent to gold and Litecoin to silver. This is done for multiple reasons, but the main reason is to symbolize the obvious relationship between the two coins as ‘siblings’ of sorts. Bitcoin as the older brother (created by the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto), and Litecoin being the younger of the two (created in 2011 by former MIT graduate, and Google Engineer, Charlie Lee).

Each has their strengths as a peer to peer payment coin, but Litecoin was created with the sole purpose of being a more nimble and ‘every day payments’ minded alternative to Bitcoin. Hence the differences in processing speeds of 2.5 and 10 minutes.

Much like gold and silver, one is considered more as a means of storing wealth (gold) while the other is used for settling payments between two people or entities(silver). Bitcoin is versatile enough to be used as both a store of value and a form of payment, but Litecoin, at a steep discount in price to Bitcoin and much faster to transact with, was built for speed and efficiency from the onset.

If I were a sports team, cinema, travel agency or store, how do I even start accepting either or both Bitcoin and Litecoin?

Many times, the hardest part of adopting a new practice, method or paradigm shifting technology is the unfamiliar terminology and processes involved in getting lined up properly to participate. And up until recently, that was the biggest hurdle in the race to accepting crypto that many businesses were hesitant about.

But fear no more, as the ability to jump onto the fast track of accepting crypto is now easier than ever before. Payment processing companies such as Aliant Payments (now in a partnership with the Litecoin Foundation), Coinbase Commerce (a popular US online crypto exchange)and others like them take most, if not all the guesswork out of the transition.

It can literally take less time to set up your entire chain of stores than it does to process those credit card payments, and many times with the exact same equipment you already have in-store RIGHT NOW.

Having this type of information available, the time to enter the game of accepting crypto is now. With the flow of money exchange going fully digital in the future, every fan, movie goer and event participant will be using their phone or other electronic device to pay for their seat. Just make sure your seat isn’t on the bench when the game is on the line…as in your bottom line.

Don’t let this be you

If you would be interested in learning more about how this historic change in how we see, spend and accept money can be brought to your sports team, cinema, theater or store, please contact me via LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-schwartz-562a346b/) or on Twitter (@DaddyCool1991). I will be glad to share more information and even direct you to a digital payment processor or Point of Sales representative that can assist in adding crypto to your selection of payment options.