If you are a small business owner, you may have chosen to support bitcoin by accepting it as payment for goods or services you sell. Of course, small business owners like you are going to play a significant role in bringing bitcoin to the masses.
However, after setting up a wallet for this purpose and strategically placing the sign “bitcoin accepted here” at your brick and mortar or online store, there is another little matter to ponder about.
And that is the volatility of the bitcoin currency. How are you going to lock your prices in order not to lose some value when you exchange bitcoin for dollars?
Of course, you do not want to sell a commodity at a price favorable to you today only to lose some of its value to exchange market forces the next day.
Bitcoin volatility is the elephant in the room for many businesses
Within a year, the value of the bitcoin has swung between a high of $1242 in November 2013 and a low of under $300 in October 2014. On a daily average, the volatility has been as high as 5%.
In fact, when it comes to businesses accepting bitcoin for payment, volatility is always the elephant in the room.
However, with the right planning and approach, it cannot deny you and your customers the benefits that come with using the currency.
This is even more critical when you source your merchandise from suppliers who are not accepting bitcoin for payment on their part. And even when they do their pricing is in Dollars, Pounds or other fiat currency.
In fact, it is for this reason that those major online brands that have chosen to include bitcoin in their payment options have signed deals with merchant processors such as Bitpay and Coinbase.
Having a mechanism to lock your price value is necessary
This is meant to protect their prices from a change in the value of the bitcoin, or any other crypto coin for that matter, and maintain the profitability of transactions.
However, for a coffee shop at the street corner or a small town grocery store this might not be a feasible option for now and maybe never.
And this is where a Bitcoin ATM comes in.
It can insulate your small business from price swings through offering an opportunity for you to exchange bitcoin for Dollars at the end of each business day or even on intervals during the day. This option is instant and comes at a very low cost.
In order to benefit, you can either install one at your premise or utilize any that is nearby.