In this post I am going to talk you about the things that I had to investigate in order to be able to apply the action plan, since in my country there is a lot of misinformation about the cryptocurrency subject, and when i was approaching to talk with the owners of the businesses, They pumped me with questions (and it is understandable) and well ... I had to research and prepare myself on the subject to be able to show them security in the subject and make everything work correctly!
In the end, everything is worth it because the more prepared i am, the more locals will accept the new payment method
I will also show you 3 new bussines that started to accept Bytes as payment method.
Lets start!
One of the most frequent questions was: Is it even legal?
Previously, the laws of the exchange rate of the Venezuelan State, made illegal the circulation of any other currency that was not Bolivares within the state. If they found you doing transactions with Dollars, Euros or Colombian Pesos and they prove it, they could take you to jail. So there was some distrust among the owners of the businesses.
But all this changed with the creation of The Petro (but we will not talk about the petro)
the fact is that in order to implement The Petro within venezuela, the Venezuelan government created a series of new laws
In Official Gazette No. 41,452 dated August 2, 2018, a Decree of the National Constituent Assembly was published, which establishes the Repeal of the Exchange Regime and its Illicit
CONSIDERING
The State's interest in conferring on Venezuelan society a new regulatory framework in which individuals can make foreign exchange transactions between private parties in foreign currency, of legal origin, without further limitations than those established by law.CONSIDERING
That the exercise of public liberties enshrined in the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, in terms of the exchange system, means that the State reinforces the guarantees for individuals, whether individuals or legal entities, national or foreign, to participate more actively in socio-economic ventures, investments, productive activities and social development, and with the firm intention of providing the maximum assurances for productive foreign investment, with a broad vision consistent with the new socio-economic model that the country and the Venezuelan people deserve for their greater prosperity and well-being.
Source
In other words: It is no longer illegal to use another type of currency within the Venezuelan state.
But what about the cryptocurrencies?
In the Official Gazette number 6,370.
The fundamental bases that allow the creation, circulation, use and exchange of cryptoactives, by natural and legal persons, public and private, residents or not in the territory of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela are established
Article 9 of this Official Gazette tells us that:
Article 9. The Venezuelan State will promote, protect and guarantee the use of cryptocurrencies as means of payment in public institutions, private, mixed or joint ventures, inside and outside the national territory.
Not only is it legal, but also: The Venezuelan State will promote, protect and guarantee the use of cryptocurrencies as means of payment.
So we're on good way.
Another of the most frequent questions was: How do we know how many bytes customers should pay for the product?
In other words, how they could do the monetary conversion of bytes to bolivares...
In the official homepage of the exchange house @capybaraexchange https://capybaraexchange.com/ There is a calculator from Bolivares to Bytes and vice versa.
100 Sovereign Bolivars: 18.37 MB (To round)
The person just have to put the amount of bolivares to be paid and the calculator will automatically tell you how many bytes must be transferred. Simple.
I remind you that all this was part of the research I had to do in order to give confidence to the owners of the businesses and to implement the plan ...
Another of the most frequent questions was: Once I have the Bytes, what can I do with them?
If they need the Bolivares immediately to buy more merchandise from the suppliers, they can easily sell the bytes to the exchange house of @capybaraexchange and have their money available. (For now, this is inevitable because providers do not accept bytes yet)
They can also use these bytes in the other businesses that are already accepting the bytes as a payment method.
Which brings us to the next point:
This week I managed to get 3 more businesses to accept Bytes as payment method
A car repair shop
Their Byteball address: QK23NKYHYFQ7UJVH67QMXZXEFM4ZLOFV
A shop of smartphone accesories and reparation
Their Byteball address: XXN5OTEF3AHIVNT3IHPWDG6TG4PEGS54
A butcher shop and vegetables
Even when there is not meat in venezuela, they still sell vegetables and eggs until the meat is back
Their Byteball Address: NDMLK52FBPV2TGR4U4JHBAHO5DAXAGLH
I must admit that achiveing that business of food selling were the first one to accept Bytes as a method of payment, was a key point to get more people to accept the bytes too, because to all people is useful to buy food with the Bytes obtained.
And precisely for that reason, the butcher shop and vegetables of this report, made its first sales in Bytes, the story went like this:
Two of the people who received money from the Airdrop (thanks to the byteball community) went to the deli and food store of the first report but it was closed. As it was closed they called me to ask if there was not another place that accepted bytes because they had come from far away. And just on that day, I had spoken with the owner of the butcher and vegetable of this report, so as they were also accepting bytes they went to that business and used the Bytes to buy: Bananas, Cheese and Eggs.
To make any cryptocurrency work, in this case the bytes, they must be used daily as a method of payment for products, food and services.
Does it sound familiar? Well, it's happening.
In the next a-thon byteball post I will report on more experiences like these; of the merchants accepting bytes and people paying with bytes, to see what they thought and what recommendations they could give to improve everything.