Bitcoin Private BTCP Real World Use Case

The question that is often asked about cryptocurrencies is, “what can you do with them?” Right now, most people just accumulate or trade them. I wanted to try an actual use case to see what possibilities and benefits can be derived from their utilization. The cryptocurrency I chose to use was Bitcoin Private. I am an owner of a Holiday Inn Express hotel that has a waterpark and laser tag arena attached. A friend of mine asked if he could make a reservation during spring break using crypto. Knowing that he held BTCP, I asked if he would be willing to use it for a test run. After he agreed, I set up a wallet specifically for the hotel. The price of BTCP at the time was around $25 and the price of the room was $175. I emailed the wallet address to him and he copied the address into his “pay to” bar in the send folder. We did this while talking through the steps over the phone, to make sure everything worked properly. In a matter of a few seconds, seven BTCP were sent to the hotel’s wallet for a fee of .000339 BTCP or $.06. The seven BTCP showed up as unconfirmed instantaneously and took a total of 90 seconds to show up fully transferred.

On a typical $175 transaction, we would pay around 2%+ in credit card processing fees, depending on the type of card. This equates to $3.50+ per transaction for this amount, compared to the $.06 that was paid by the person transferring the BTCP. This may not seem like a lot at first glance, but our credit card processing fees are close to $100k per year. We also have many erroneous charge back claims that are very difficult to fight with the credit card companies. We even get an occasional bad check still, even though we try to limit their acceptance. All of these expenses and lost money can be mostly eliminated by the use of blockchain and cryptocurrencies.

Credit card processing company typically take 2 or 3 days to transfer the money into your business’s bank account. Imagine having the “money” to spend in a matter of minutes, not days. As a business, the amount of savings and speed of transfer would make using something like BTCP a no brainer. Businesses, like gas stations and grocery stores, that are notoriously known for having razor thin profit margins could benefit greatly.

Not all cryptocurrencies are suitable for business transactions. Bitcoin Private allows businesses to conduct their transactions on the blockchain without having them exposed to their competitors, etc. I feel that the need for privacy in business transactions will be paramount when deciding on using a cryptocurrency.

Now comes the hard part, adoption. Convincing a business owner may be the easy part, but the process to use crypto is far from easy. Each business has its own type of payment system. As long as the customer is in front of their computer, transferring BTCP is easy. Figuring out different payment solutions will be critical. Then there is convincing the consumer to actually use crypto. Why would they? How can they benefit?

If you can make accepting crypto worth it to the business owner, they will find a way for their consumer to benefit. Each business has something that they can give, that costs them little, but has value for their customer. For example, our hotel has a laser tag arena and game rooms that use FunCards. You can load these cards with points, allowing you to play the different games. We could give free points away or upgrade their hotel room to those that used BTCP to pay. Neither of these examples cost the hotel anything, but they provide value to our customer. In the example mentioned above, a gas station could give away a free fountain drink or coffee. It would be up to each business to decide how to make using crypto work for them. Given the huge impact on profit, most businesses would find a way to make it work.

My goal in writing this post was to not only try out an actual use case for BTCP, but to pose questions of how and why we can use this technology. When everyone participates in making the technology better, we come up with great solutions.