Arizona has been leading by example for about a year, passing HB 2417 last year at this time which recognizes the legality of blockchain signatures and SmartContracts, as well as passing HB 2603 earlier this month that permits corporations to utilize distributed ledgers. Recent revisions to SB 1901 clarified that the state government is required to convert all crypto-payments to USD at the prevailing rate upon receipt, and they widened the number of cryptocurrencies that can be utilized to settle tax debt to include “any cryptocurrency.”

Several other states have either passed various laws dealing with cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology, or they are currently drafting bills along those same lines. As more consumers invest and utilize cryptocurrencies, the more businesses and states want to move in the direction of accepting crypto as a viable payment option.

But Huge Questions Remain to be Answered

Such as… how is Arizona, and the other states/businesses, going to implement this in a way that is balanced and fair for all customers, no matter which cryptocurrency they wish to use?

Is Arizona going to inadvertently show preference for one over another? – the ‘big’ names in the market may be ‘winning’ now, but the future of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies in general is far from decided. What is on top today could very well disappear tomorrow and two months from now there could be hundreds of new blockchain projects with leading tokens of their own.

Are they going to create an entirely new position and hire/train someone to develop and maintain the payment gateway? Do they even realize the current complexities of taking this from paper to implementation and that it isn’t simply a matter of getting a wallet or Bitcoin address? How will they handle transactions from customers wishing to pay using more than one cryptocurrency or combining them with fiat payments? Do they understand the risks involved in this undertaking?

And the problem is, there’s no turnkey solution for this. They are going to have to spend valuable tax dollars to pay someone to develop a customized payment gateway specifically for their needs. Right? Well that’s not entirely accurate… Not anymore anyway.

Currently anyone wishing to accept cryptocurrencies, whether businesses, application developers, or state governments, have to design gateways around their existing systems. As you can imagine, this can be time consuming and extremely costly. Not to mention a huge headache for developers.

But There is Help on the Horizon

OPEN Platform is set to launch into developer beta in just a few short weeks and from everything that I’ve seen, they are exactly what Arizona is going to need. In short, OPEN provides developers with the exact components needed to integrate crypto payments into their existing structure so that they can accept the encrypted payment data with various currencies. This includes ‘mixing and matching’ and splitting payments among multiple denominations as well as being able to be deployed on any blockchain.

NEO Global Capital recently partnered with OPEN and this gave OPEN an even stronger advantage as they move forward. The partnership with NGC provides them with new decentralized database protocols, highly scalable blockchains that have huge potential for OPEN integration, and next-gen market exchanges. The symbiotic relationship also gives NEO’s DApps the full ability to accept billions of dollars in cryptocurrencies and provides them a secure & efficient developer infrastructure upon which to design new applications.

And that’s just the beginning. OPEN is working tirelessly on their partnership development with other blockchains and corporations and the next few weeks should prove very interesting for OPEN. As will the entire cryptocurrency market as more and more become aware of the huge potential that OPEN is bringing to the industry.

With very little blockchain knowledge, Arizona and everyone else can have the OPEN platform designed and deployed today for Ethereum or any of the current OPEN supported blockchains. You can visit the OPEN Platform website for more information and even if you aren’t looking for a blockchain/cryptocurrency solution today, I still highly recommend that you check them out because chances are pretty high that you’re going to be hearing a lot more about them very soon.

The post Arizona Opens Another Crypto-Door: Do They Have the Right Keys? appeared first on CoinSpeaker.