I have been accepting payments in nano (ticker: XNO, symbol: Ӿ) since 2020, and while onboarding others to do the same, one of the most recurring concerns is "How to properly off-ramp to fiat currencies to save, spend, or pay for business costs?" This is a fair concern, which I want to address in this article.

TL;DR: You won't need to off-ramp most of the time. Or, at least, that's the general idea: Avoiding on-ramps and off-ramps as much as possible.

What are on-ramps and off-ramps?

Ramps reference entry and exit points from fiat to nano and vice-versa. Essentially, if we understand nano as a road of users coming and going, an on-ramp is when these users exchange a fiat currency for XNO, while an off-ramp exchanges XNO for fiat. Getting in and out of the nano road.

Nano's On-ramp & Off-ramp visualization. Source: Vini Barbosa (@vinibarbosabr)

The "Nano Road" is a permissionless road that anyone can use anywhere and at any time. It is a high-speed road connecting any starting point to any destination, usually in less than a second and without charging fees from its riders.

Conversely, the fiat roads are permissioned and are not available to anyone anywhere at any time. Moreover, the ramps are the nano road's weak spots, where the fiat road owners can create barriers, rentseek, and decide who has the right to use them or not.

In summary, the nano road is a free-to-use high-speed road that can efficiently lead you anywhere you want. However, it is limited by the on-ramps and off-ramps, which you can decide not to use with the proper management.

This is what this article is about. I will not address the particularities of the fiat roads (like taxes and other regulations), which will change according to each individual's location. If you want to better understand these particularities, you should consult a local professional.

Business management: Accepting nano payments and avoiding the fiat ramps

Accepting nano payments in your business is as easy as setting up a self-custody wallet (usually won't take more than five minutes) and communicating it visibly (a "nano accepted here" sticker on a physical point of sale or similar on a website or social media account).

"Nano accepted here" stickers in Portuguese. Photo: Vini Barbosa (@vinibarbosabr)

Additionally, it is possible to use third-party services or integrations to help receive and manage the nano payments. Check some merchant solutions that accept nano, like NowPayments, Sellix, and pay.nano.to.

Just like cash, you communicate that you take XNO for payments, and your customers will pay from their pockets (self-custody wallet) to yours. At the end of the day/week/month/quarter, you make the cash accounting by taking notes on a ledger and moving part (or all) of it from the daily hot wallet to a safe cold wallet.

Ok, now you still need to pay infrastructure costs, goods, and service providers, pay your employees, and take your share of the profit; thus, you definitely need to off-ramp your XNO, don't you? No. Not necessarily.

Cryptocurrency inflow will be relatively low at first

Let's be realistic here; there aren't yet many people looking to spend their cryptocurrency (including nano) daily. Or, at least, there are far more people in the world currently spending their local fiat currencies instead of a better monetary alternative.

Therefore, businesses can expect the payment share in nano to be far lower than that of fiat payments in the beginning. The shift will most likely be gradual instead of sudden, which is perfect; here's why:

By receiving a relatively low share of your payments in nano, you have enough time and lower risk exposure to learn this new endeavor on a business level. Overall, you will still be able to keep your fiat cash flow sustaining your business with your usual customers to pay for infra, providers, employees, and most part of your profit-taking share.

Eliminating the on-ramps with an alternative nano DCA strategy

Nano will be an extra revenue, which you will learn to manage properly—the same way you learned to manage your fiat-based business when you started it in the past.

At first, all nano revenue could be paid as a bonus to the owners and kept for mid-to-long-term savings, as some dollar-cost averaging (DCA) strategy. Instead of buying XNO, you take this share as profit and save it for the future. As a result, you will slowly eliminate the need to on-ramp (buying nano with fiat), directly receiving it in exchange for your work.

However, if you still want to exchange XNO with other currencies, check the exchanges that currently support nano.

You can also propose to pay your employees bonuses and result-oriented rewards with nano as the volume increases. This would be a separate payment from the usual wage and should ideally be given guidelines for safekeeping and insights on how to spend directly—which leads us to the next step: building (or taking part) in a circular nano-based economy.

Build and take part in a nano-based circular economy

So, you have been taking a share of your profits in nano and paying bonuses that way for a while, but (1) the volume in nano payments is surging, and/or (2) it is time to use these savings that have increased their purchasing power; should you off-ramp now?

Maybe... It's up to you, but again, not necessarily. At least, not in the most common way of doing it (directly exchanging nano for fiat to your bank account).

For that, you can take part in worldwide crypto-based circular economies on the internet, using crypto-native services such as gift card stores (like RedeemforMe, Coinsbee, Cake Pay, etc) and merchants or other services that can be useful for businesses, like NanoGPT and its pay-per-use model for artificial intelligence (AI) tools or Fyncom with its finance and communication solutions.

Moreover, you can start networking with other local businesses, merchants, and service providers who could also be interested in accepting nano for payments and starting a local circular economy where entities can directly earn and spend locally in a peer-to-peer manner.

At this point, it's essential to always have some educational material available and easily accessible at your business place (online or physical) to help onboard new users interested in nano. This achieves two goals: (1) onboard customers that will start using this preferred medium of exchange at your store and, possibly, bring new customers alike in the future, and (2) onboard businesses, merchants, and service providers where you can directly spend your XNO revenue without needing an off-ramp.

Start slowly, but start now!

In conclusion, nano payment adoption will not suddenly happen by magic. It is a gradual change for a better relationship with money that takes time, learning, and educating others, and it won't happen unless enthusiasts do their part. Nevertheless, most businesses and individuals could already start taking their first steps now. The sooner people start doing it, the sooner a relevant adoption will happen.

I started receiving very small payments in bitcoin for writing gigs back in 2020. A few months later, I had already sold some goods online in exchange for nano. In 2021 and 2022, I received my yearly bonuses in BTC, and in 2023, I freelanced for nano, and other cryptocurrencies, slightly increasing the crypto-based payments share over my dominating fiat payments.

Nano has always been my preferred choice due to its properties as money, and I continue to work with Ririro and get some of my payments in XNO.

For what it's worth, the more I started using crypto for payments, the more I naturally started distancing myself from BTC due to long waiting times, fees, and lack of privacy that were not interesting from a business perspective with enough offsetting competitive advantages.

This year, I finally achieved my goal of earning my payments 100% in cryptocurrencies while discovering new ways to use that money without relying on off-ramps.

It is possible!

Start slowly and move forward as you feel comfortable, according to your own reality. Nano will only have sustainable long-term value if we recognize this value and adopt them. No adoption equals no use, which equals no organic demand. Speculators of non-used coins are just playing a "Greater Fool" game that is fated to end and bring significant losses to the ultimate "greater fool."

Finally, start slowly, but start now. As you go, join me and teach others how to accept and use payments in nano without relying on fiat ramps.