In an increasingly regulated world, the industries that are not heavily regulated need to start switching to Bitcoin and Lightning payments now
I’ll start this article off by giving you a little bit of back story. I’m from Canada and in Canada the government is increasingly crushing people under high taxes, massive inflation and unreasonable regulation. This seems to be the story in a lot of places but Canada is particularly bad on the regulation and taxes front, at least from my perspective. I live in a rural area where gasoline prices are much higher than in the higher population density areas of our province. Food prices are higher, product prices are higher including on the used market and property taxes here are way higher than what one might expect in such a remote area. You get the idea.
Now when I moved here the only method of income I had was crypto mining, specifically Ethereum. That seemed to be doing well for me for a short time. As time went on I noticed my savings dipping further and further and even though I was holding a lot of coins that were doing well overall, I was spending much more than I was able to earn with any of the crypto mining methods. I didn’t lose a ton of money on any one of these but the Canadian market got so bad that I was forced to liquidate most of the tokens that I had set aside in order to make myself more on the cryptocurrency market. Not an ideal situation to be in.
As time went on I was forced to shut off my Ethereum mining rigs and get a “real job.” Since then I’ve been more or less happily back in the the fiat mines (literally working at a gold mine) working for a meager (but not terrible) living and doing better than I was without a job. The biggest change over the course of the Last few months has been my switch to Bitcoin maximalism. I’ve learned more about the technology/currency and I’ve switched any remaining extra funds over to Bitcoin.
This all being said, The Canadian economy is now worse than it’s ever been and I’m living paycheck to paycheck even though I make something like $78,000 a year in the mining sector. Obviously, this is absolutely Ridiculous. This is what brings me to my side income.
I’ve been a professional photographer for several years now and up until this point I hadn’t considered trying to generate an income in anything other than Canadian dollars. With Canada being in the state it is currently I have reconsidered that and I am now accepting preferably Bitcoin or cash but I really want to emphasize Bitcoin. My issue at the moment is that I live in an area that is very rural and very remote so there are not a lot of people who even know what Bitcoin is let alone people who will actually use it. This is my biggest hurdle at the moment but frankly I don’t think it’s not much of a hurdle.
My primary plan for some time has been to build an online business focusing on education, community And maybe a bit of consulting versus going out and doing primarily photo shoots. Obviously that has to exist as part of the business ultimately, but my real goal is to focus on educating others and helping them to get to where I am and beyond. Basically I want to pass on my skill set and I want to avoid the awful economy as much as I can while doing it.
This is where accepting Bitcoin comes in. By accepting Bitcoin as payment for my photography services and only using marketplaces that Are built on that technology, I can largely skip past the modern woes of our economy. I can skip out on taxes and I can skip out on any kind of reporting that I would otherwise need to do. I can basically run a business completely free of the government and not need to do anything other than simply do what I would do if it were a hobby. This really excites me.
Imagine a world where you can just transact without having to report anything on your taxes. Imagine not having taxes at all! In an industry such as photography where it’s mostly digital anyways, Bitcoin is the perfect method of payment for your services. With the lightning network And NFC chips, You can do all of your transacting right there on your phone to a lightning enabled Bitcoin wallet.
I think these industries where there isn’t any regulation at all or at least very little regulation, are the perfect places to start doing this. They’re the perfect breeding ground for all Bitcoin transactions and businesses. Why get the government involved at all when you can simply run your business the way it should be run? As they say on nostr, “Bitcoin fixes this.”
I’m really looking forward to building my business in the nostr environment and on the back of a Bitcoin standard. I’ve already started the transition by joining nostr and I’m beginning to speak about photography there. I don’t think I have felt as positive or as enthusiastic about this endeavor since joining nostr as a social platform and I’m really happy that I’m here. I believe that this is the future of digital transactions and social media and it may just be the best way to run an online business going forward.
Thank you for taking the time to read this and if anybody wants to see anything specific from me feel free to hit me up on nostr! I hope my thoughts brought some value to you and maybe got you thinking about how you could start transitioning your business to a Bitcoin standard.