VANCOUVER, BC – OCTOBER 29: Gabriel Scheare uses the world’s first bitcoin ATM on October 29, 2013… [+] at Waves Coffee House in Vancouver, British Columbia. Scheare said he “just felt like I was part of history.” The ATM, called Robocoin, allows users to buy or sell the digital currency known as bitcoins. Once used only for black market sales on the internet, bitcoins are beginning to be accepted at a growing number of businesses. (Photo by David Ryder/Getty Images)

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A new wave of Bitcoin adoption seems to emerge every year. Sometimes it’s retail investors who drive the wave – other times it’s institutional support, and lastly it’s nation states that have adopted it. However, a powerful wave of strong sustained support has been the businesses that decide to operate on a Bitcoin standard: those that choose to accept Bitcoin for their goods and services and use it to sustain themselves.

Matt Hill is the founder and CEO of Home9Start9 is trying to take sovereign computing to the next level. Start9 does this in three ways: by offering a server that comes pre-loaded for people to use and install in their homes, by creating and distributing Start OS, a free and open source operating system for people trying to run their own servers, and by offering an application marketplace for those running their own servers. Recently, Start OS was released for clearnet connections, which is typically how most people browse the Internet, further expanding Start9’s user base and reach.

Start9 uses BTCPay, its own Lightning node, to accept Bitcoin payments. They estimate that about one in six sales are now made in Bitcoin.

“So BTCPay is a wonderful piece of technology – I think it’s underrated whether it’s possible at this point, but I think it’s definitely underutilized – a lot of merchants are looking at these third-party custodial solutions like Coinbase Commerce.”[…]. So they just do what they know how to do, which is to contact a service provider and say, hey, do this for me and I’ll pay you a fee, without realizing that this undermines a significant part of the value proposition that Bitcoin provides.”

As Leo Weese, author of nodeacademy.orgputs it this way: “The Lightning Network allows anyone to participate. To run a node — or rather, to become one — requires only minimal equipment, skills, and capital. That anyone can be their own payment processor and bank is a powerful idea that keeps the system competitive and moral hazards in check.” This same logic applies to the wave of companies that may be interested in accepting Bitcoin payments and maintaining custody of their funds. They may be just one BTCPay Server instance away.

Matt continues – the goal is not just to accept payments in Bitcoin, but to use it to operate: “[…] I have stated publicly before that our goal as a company is to be on a Bitcoin standard within the next few years – to be completely on a Bitcoin standard – to pay our employees, contractors and partners only in Bitcoin, to accept only Bitcoin as payment for our products and to purchase all of our raw materials from suppliers in Bitcoin. […] We want to live in the world we are helping to create. […]” as Matt from Start9 said.

Other companies in the Bitcoin space are doing just that. Coinkite founder NVK commented on how the recent drop in Bitcoin prices amounted to a sale – Coinkite sells Bitcoin security products like hardware wallets and offers a 5% discount if paid in Bitcoin. Bitcoin custodian companies like Home also offer Bitcoin payment options. This is a maturation of the current push toward Bitcoin as a financial product, held in trust by a custodian. These Bitcoin companies think about a Bitcoin standard in a fundamentally different way.

“[…] You know, we’re not an investment company. It’s not like we’re speculating on Bitcoin, we really see it as a monetary asset that’s better than the dollar, and so when it comes to what we have, we try to hold as much Bitcoin as we can and keep just enough dollars in the bank to take care of – really the next two months. The majority of everything we have as a company is in Bitcoin, and we only hold enough dollars to survive and that’s usually taken care of by our cash inflows from product sales. So we’re striving to get to a Bitcoin standard, and I hope we’ll be there in the next few years. I don’t know how long a few years will be. It could be two, it could be six, but I think we’ll get there.” as Matt puts it.

This wave of companies adopting a Bitcoin standard is not confined to Bitcoin alone. In the past, Andy Yen of Proton, the provider of private email, storage, and VPN solutions, has also indicated that they are able and willing to accept Bitcoin. To this day, Proton maintains an option for pay in BTC. VPS providers that allow you to host your own content/internet servers, such as Lunanode, also accept Bitcoin and encourage the use of their services for hosting BTCPay Server Instances. Other online businesses that accept Bitcoin:

1. Mullvad VPNa privacy-focused VPN solution.
2. link.silentan eSIM provider
3. Kagian ad-free search engine.
4. cheap name is a domain name registrar that accepts Bitcoin.
5. Alzathe largest online retailer in the Czech Republic accepts Bitcoin.

Retail companies around the world are also starting to get Bitcoinblending the physical and virtual worlds – with hotspots in Prague, Vancouver, Rolante and more. Companies like Sweet Satans offer maple syrup and honey, and are Bitcoin-only, offer an example of physical businesses meeting virtual ones that have adopted a Bitcoin standard. Through Zapritea set of physical businesses as varied as a Ontological clinic for a store that sells spices accepting Bitcoin, showing that physical businesses are also slowly taking the first steps towards a Bitcoin standard.

As Bitcoin continues to evolve, more businesses may simply aspire to this Bitcoin standard: receiving payments in Bitcoin, paying their employees in Bitcoin, and holding Bitcoin in reserve. In a world that assumes that constant inflation will eventually consume savings, this could be a radical shift in the way businesses operate.

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