How long will credit card processing be down for? I've heard it might be down for good. Is this true? And if it is, might we see the return of a number of products?

It might be down for good. I don't know for sure yet. I am working on it, though. We will not be adding any new products without reliable processing. Sad part is that we were about to start releasing some new compounds we developed. I put that all on hold... again.

It's actually almost 2 years to the day that we first lost our card processing on Ceretropic. We were the first of the major noootropics companies to deal with it, and it almost destroyed our whole company back then. It was then when I realized just how much of a scam our system is. Underwriters and risk managers at banks have the power to say what people can and cannot sell to each other. It's madness. There are zero protections for business banking like there are for consumer banking. They can and do make up random rules that dictate whether or not businesses live or die. How can a business operate without processing or banking? How can I follow the rules when they refuse to tell me them ahead of time? Even when we seemingly break one of their internal made-up rules, they sometimes don't even tell us what rule we broke! How can I play the game when every time I make some ground, the referee comes and smacks the ball out of my hand and throws me off the field? Who the fuck are these people that think they can tell me what I am or am not allowed to do within the bounds of the law? This is why I know that crypto is the future.

I know many people think crypto is too difficult, or is a pyramid scheme. I know a lot of people are very skeptical of it, because bullshit scams are abound these days. However, I have lived through some crazy shit now, and I see why people are so excited about it. It's a decentralized, near-instantaneous, worldwide, system of asset transfer built off math and proof of work. It completely breaks money down to its simplest part, and for that it goes past what fiat currencies have ever been able to do. Some people like to point to it only being worth what it is because people think it is. However, if you are really honest with yourself, that's all anything is. A US dollar is only worth what people think it is. A first edition printing of Harry Potter, or a Jackson Pollock, or a damn rare Magic the Gathering card is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. Everything only has value because we ascribe it value. Crypto takes all that and boils it down to its simplest part. It literally doesn't exist physically. It's a digital public ledger based on cryptographic keys. But because of that, it allows something never before possible.

If I wanted to send $100,000 to a bank account in Europe, I would need to go down to my bank and instigate a wire transfer. Then I would have to pay a $45 fee to send it, and the receiver would have to pay anywhere from $15 to $45 to receive it. Because it's over $10K, the bank would need to get authorization, and file a SAR with FinCEN. If anything looked suspicious about it, I would have to answer a bunch more questions, and possibly deal with a call from a government official. Then, if everything was approved, it would be lucky to get there in a couple days. On top of that, the receiving bank might put a hold on the funds for a certain number of days. If it is a new bank account, that can be upwards of 30-45 days they hold the funds. That's just Europe. If I was sending to China, or Dubai, or somewhere in Africa, it gets even harder. Did you know that I once had a $10,000 payment to a supplier held for over a month, and an investigation started, because the person I was sending to had the same name as a government official in China? They wanted to make sure that I was not bribing Chinese government officials. So I not only had to wait for the payment to clear, I was forced to answer all sorts of questions to prove my innocence... This is our financial system right now.

If I wanted to send $100,000 of crypto to someone in Europe, or China, or anywhere else, I would just go to my wallet, put in their wallet address, put like a $5-10 fee to make sure it confirms quickly, and send. Then 10-20min later, it would be confirmed in their wallet and I would go about my day. THAT'S IT! I literally just told the blockchain that I was sending crypto from one wallet to another, and the network just confirms it. It's all decentralized, and nothing actually moves anywhere. Bitcoin doesn't exist in the US, or China, or anywhere else. So it doesn't have anywhere to "go." I control my private keys, and the other person controls theirs. That's all it is. This is why people are excited about this technology. If you have never had to deal with these things, you may not have realized just how big of a breakthrough this is. I quite literally cannot do it as easily with any other technology out there. Sure, using your Visa card to pay for day to day goods might seem easier, and right now it probably is. However, that's only a single use case for currency, and even then you are at the mercy of Visa and Mastercard. Plus, do you know how much money they are taking in the background?!? You don't see it, but some of us in the high risk processing side of things are paying 10% of the total sale in fees, plus another 10% in rolling reserves. There is a lot of money out there that does not want to see Bitcoin, or any other cryptocurrency, take over. That's because they are financially raping all of us, and it's all hidden in the background. I got into Bitcoin in 2010-2011, and I admit I did not fully understand the potential. Even in 2013, when I missed the big jump, I still did not fully understand. It was only after starting a business, and being denied or losing 40-50 processors and 13 bank accounts, that I finally realized just how powerful a decentralized currency could be.

So that's a long rant, but hopefully it gets some of you to really look into cryptocurrency, and see the potential there. It's going to change the financial world like the internet changed the commerce world. Just like the internet did not kill off all physical stores, crypto is not going to kill off all traditional financial systems. However, it's going to be huge, because all anyone wants to do is work for their money, then be free to use it how they see fit. That includes not being grifted for fees along every step of the way by entrenched industries. Crypto allows that. Through all the times that our card processing has been down, through all the times we were forced to take Echeck down, through all the bank accounts we have lost, you have always been able to pay for your order on Ceretropic with crypto. Just think about that, then multiply it by the millions of businesses around the world.