Choosing to accept bitcoin is actually the hard part while setting up your business to accept bitcoin is the easier part. Dell, Microsoft, Dish and Fiverr are all bitcoin merchants and you should be too. Don't you want to sell as much stuff as possible and give your customers multiple ways to pay you? There shouldn't be much of a debate then. You should be asking how fast can we get set up. 

A Couple Questions

1) What type of business are you in and what are you selling? If you sell services, fewer items and invoice infrequently accepting bitcoin is really a snap.  

2) Do you want to keep bitcoin or cash it out to US dollars or another fiat currency? If you want to cash out all or a potion of your bitcoin, you'll have to choose a bitcoin payment processor. 

Get paid in bitcoin instantly with these Five Payment Weapons:

1) Processors

A bitcoin payment processor is similar to credit card processors and PayPal but they only process bitcoin. Payment buttons, API's...

Bitcoin is the most revolutionary technology in human history. Bitcoin crosses language, technological, governmental, political and financial exchange barriers. Anyone with a smart phone can send or receive bitcoin in a matter of seconds. It's like the world's first universal currency. It has properties like gold, yet it's stealthier. There are multiple attributes of money dancing in harmony with one another. The level of harmony depends on the asset, currency or value being used and exchanged. No form of money can simultaneously have the best of all attributes, however bitcoin comes very close to achieving this. With a few lightning fast tricks, the price of bitcoin can be hedged like magic. 

Three Attributes of Money

Money has three attributes, medium of exchange, unit of account and store of value. Everyone gets the medium of exchange concept but rarely understand the other two attributes. The US dollar is a good unit of account because we buy things in dollars and use it...

BBB Blog #1:

This is the first blog post in a series called Banking Burnout Bonanza™ inspired by a chapter in my book, The Ultimate Bitcoin Business Guide, of the same name. Banking burnout comes from the energy drain of everyday banking. It's comprised of three simple things:

1) Having to wait a long time for your own money

2) Having to pay lots of fees to use you own money

3) Having to deal with lots of headaches when using your money

The $25 Fraud

On May 20, 2016, I noticed an interesting ACH debit for $25 in our business account. It grabbed my attention because it was a Chase e-pay withdraw and I didn't recognize the vendor name. In addition, a twenty-five-dollar fraud is likely part one of a thousand-dollar fraud scheme. This could only mean on one of two things:

1) Someone got our business bank account number and initiated an unauthorized withdraw.

2) Someone inadvertently typed in the wrong bank account number. (This is highly unlikely although the bank said it was...

It's far easier spending bitcoin than buying bitcoin, which can take longer if you've never had bitcoin before. If you want to know how to pay with bitcoin you should also know what is bitcoin used for. 

The First Requirement

All bitcoin is stored in a wallet, a collection of one or more bitcoin addresses. A bitcoin address is used to send and receive bitcoin. More accurately, the wallet holds a private key that is used to transfer bitcoin from one address to another. It's a change of ownership on the bitcoin blockchain so a wallet doesn't contain any bitcoin but its often referred to that way. 

If you have a wallet with bitcoin, then you can pay with bitcoin for anything. It just a matter of what wallet you've using and whether is associated with an exchange, a payment service provider, a self serve wallet or various other platforms. 

The Second Requirement

A business or another person should proudly say bitcoin accepted here. Therefore, another party has to accept...

Just 20 short years ago people where asking what is an email the same way people today are asking what is a bitcoin. There are various explainer videos and articles ranging from technical to simple explanations. The best bitcoin definition explains bitcoin by explaining it’s opposite, credit cards, banks and money transfers and their associated headaches. There's no existing paradigm with which to compare bitcoin therefore, the easiest way is to explain it indirectly. 

1.a) The PULL of Credit Card Chaos™

Credit cards force you to hand over ALL your credit card information to a 3rd party so they can PULL money from your account. It's like saying hey vendor, "I trust you very much to take money from my account and store all more information securely for future purchases." This means hundreds of vendors store your credit card information over and over again redundantly. It's just a matter of which of your favorite stores will get hacked and when. Home Depot and...

Bitcoin the technology and bitcoin the digital currency are amazing in every way except when it comes to accounting and managing bitcoin tax compliance. (At least for the time being) There's some amazing bitcoin tax calculator software available, but the following challenges remain nonetheless. If you only had one bitcoin wallet and you only used bitcoin and no other digital currency, then your tax calculations should be fairly simple. However, on the other end of the spectrum if you have dozens of digital currency wallets and dozens of altcoins with trading, spending and income related transactions, then you have a cluttered complex crypto landscape. 

Bitcoin Capital Gains

The IRS bitcoin stance was clarified in IRS Notice 2014-21. Bitcoin taxation is like any capital asset such as stocks, bonds and collectibles when you buy bitcoins or sell them. If you buy bitcoin for $500 and later sell it for $800 then you have a $300 capital gain. Bitcoin sold more than a year later...

I got an email the other day from a CPA asking how they can help a client buy lots of bitcoin right away. I immediately thought of three questions everyone should answer in this scenario.

Three Questions

1) How much bitcoin do you need?
2) How fast do you really need the bitcoin?
3) What do you need it for?

The three questions are critical for determining the best way to buy bitcoin fast. Sometimes you can buy less than $1000 instantly, but if you need more it might take a few days. You may be asking what difference does it make what I need bitcoin for? CPA's don't ask erroneous questions and as the most trusted professionals we want to solve your challenge so we need all three answers to give you the best advice.

Golden Rule of Fast Bitcoins (the First Time)
The more bitcoin you need the longer it will take to get and the more you have to indentify yourself.
The less bitcoin you need the faster it will take to get with more options and it can take more or less work.

Note: This...

CCC Blog #2:

I was visiting a friend in NYC and found myself in his apartment on a rare Saturday morning with a few hours to spend. I turned on the TV, which I also rarely do, and came across an excellent public television fundraising campaign coupled with a presentation by Dr. Amen regarding brain health. This is another great topic and I highly recommend you check out Dr. Amen's work. He combined expertise as a medical doctor and psychiatrist to create a brand-new approach to brain scans and brain health.

Brain Heath a No-Brainer
Dr. Amen was offering all of his best work including books and courses in print and audio versions making it an absolute no-brainer (no pun intended) for a one time pledge of $240 or $20 per month especially considering the proceeds benefit public television. I eagerly called in to pledge my support and get started with the various programs and my commitment to long-term bring health. I proceeded to handover all my credit card information per the...

CCC Blog #1 Part 2:

Make sure to read Part 1 if you haven't done so. A Billion Dollar Company Can't Get It Right so I had to explain how they had incorrectly deployed the wrong system. Banks do not care if you give them an incorrect address for a credit card assuming that it's done in good faith. Therefore, a credit card address verification is simply a matching exercise not an exercise in correctness or completeness.

If you provide an incorrect or incomplete address to a bank and you supply the exact same incomplete or incorrect address when you buy something with a credit card, then the addresses will match and you get your stuff.

The funny thing is our address works because we receive all of our mail there. No one knows their address better than themselves.

270 Times Longer & No Results
Now I'm furious because it's two hours and 15 minutes later with no results. They simply apologized and said they couldn't figure out how to take my money. It should've taken 30...

CCC Blog #1 Part 1:

This is the first blog post in a series called Credit Card Chaos™ inspired by a chapter in my book, The Ultimate Bitcoin Business Guide™, with the same name. The chapter highlights the ridiculousness of the theory of how credit cards work so this blog complements the theory by showcasing real life ridiculous credit card stories. The following is a good one so read on and enjoy.

Extreme Credit Card Pain
My first blog post on this topic came for my own life story of extreme credit card pain. As you probably know by now I am a CPA and business advisor specializing in cryptocurrency including tax advice. As another tax season rolled around for 2016 it was time to renew our intuit ProSeries Tax Software. Our ProSeries Rep suggested that we try a new web based product called Intuit Tax Online.

The benefits seemed obvious so we eagerly signed up, transferred and converted all the prior year tax files and completed our first client tax return of the year....