accepted USDC for my side project for 6 months, from lisbon. ahah. here is what actually happened

ok so. my side project is a small webhook relay api (you send your webhooks to me, i retry them properly, you sleep). about 4% of customers asked to pay in crypto, mostly from argentina, nigeria, and one guy in dubai who asks everything in crypto. i said why not pá, i'm in crypto since 2017. here is the honest report.

the setup

• usdc only, on a cheap L2, so fees were cents
• one address per customer and a small script that watches incoming transfers and marks the invoice paid
• monthly and manual. no "crypto subscription" magic, the customer sends every month

6 months of numbers

• 23 payments, about €3,140 total
• network fees: basically nothing, maybe €4 in total
• 2 customers sent on the wrong network. one i recovered (long story), one i could not. the customer was cool about it. i was not
• 1 refund. refunds are a nightmare: i sent it back manually, the customer gave me an exchange deposit address that didn't support that network, and it took 9 days to sort out

the part nobody tells you: taxes and accounting in portugal

• getting paid in crypto for a service is just business income. it's taxed on the value when you receive it, like euros. no magic
• my invoices still have to be issued in euros through certified invoicing software, so every crypto payment needs a euro value at the moment it arrived. my accountant wanted a spreadsheet with the rate and the source for every single payment
• if you keep the usdc and sell later, that is a separate event. since 2023 portugal taxes crypto gains on things held less than a year at 28%, held more than a year is exempt. that is how i understand it, ask your accountant, not me
• my accountant charged me +€40 a month for "the crypto stuff". for €3,140 of revenue in 6 months. do the math

so was it worth it?

for the money: no. the accounting cost was almost 8% of the crypto revenue. stripe is around 1.5% plus 25 cents for european cards and does everything for me.

for 2 customers: yes. a guy in argentina and a dev shop in lagos told me usdc is the only way they can pay me without losing 5 to 10% somewhere in between. for them i keep it. everyone else goes back to stripe.

and yes, MiCA and the rest of the EU rules are coming for all of this. i have opinions about brussels regulating a thing it doesn't use, but i'll keep them for the comments ahah. not your financial advisor, not your accountant. surf is good this week 🏄