Add cryptocurrenciesAccepted property to LocalBusiness

[ayumihamsaki]

Many businesses now accept cryptocurrencies as real payment exchanges. I am proposing to add the property: "cryptocurrenciesAccepted" to the "LocalBusiness".

You can use the same ISO 4217 currency format as for currenciesAccepted. For example bitcoin would be "BTC". Because all cryptocurrencies use a Trading Ticker exactly the same as currencies.

I also propose updating "paymentAccepted" and adding "Cryptocurrency" to the valid list.

An example code is below:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
        "@context": "http://schema.org",
        "@type": ["TouristAttraction", "AmusementPark"],
        "name": "Disneyland Paris",
        "description": "It's an amusement park in Marne-la-Vallée, near Paris, in France and is the most visited theme park in all of France and Europe.",
        "openingHours":["Mo-Fri 10:00-19:00", "Sa 10:00-22:00", "Su 10:00-21:00"],
        "isAccessibleForFree": false,
        "currenciesAccepted": "EUR",
        "cryptocurrenciesAccepted": [ "BTC", "ETH" ],
        "paymentAccepted":"Cash, Credit Card, Cryptocurrency",
        "url":"http://www.disneylandparis.it/"
}
</script>

I look forward to the schema team looking into this proposal in more detail.

Many Thanks.

[magico]

Is there a reason why BTC and ETH can not come up under currenciesAccepted ? Technically they are currencies and I don't see a benefit from separating them.

[ayumihamsaki]

Central Banks and the World Bank won't accept cryptocurrencies as normal currencies. So cryptocurrencies are classed as a different asset for legal reasons. That's why I suggested a new property called: "cryptocurrenciesAccepted"

See here for more details about that according to the G20: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-20/when-is-a-bitcoin-not-a-bitcoin-when-it-s-an-asset-says-g-20

"Countries increasingly see cryptos as an asset, not a currency"

[RichardWallis]

@ayumihamsaki I understand that in the eyes of some banks etc cyptocurrencies are viewed differently. However, in the use case of a user identifying if a business accepts the currency they prefer, it is exactly the same as for 'normal' currencies.

If a business wants to highlight specific types of payment they accept by category (cash, card, etc.,) they could always use the paymentAccepted property.

If a banking organization wish to highlight that they handle cyptocurrencies, they should describe it as one of the Service they provide.

[ayumihamsaki]

@magico @RichardWallis I see what you both are saying so you both are suggesting users to write the code like this:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
        "@context": "http://schema.org",
        "@type": ["TouristAttraction", "AmusementPark"],
        "name": "Disneyland Paris",
        "description": "It's an amusement park in Marne-la-Vallée, near Paris, in France and is the most visited theme park in all of France and Europe.",
        "openingHours":["Mo-Fri 10:00-19:00", "Sa 10:00-22:00", "Su 10:00-21:00"],
        "isAccessibleForFree": false,
        "currenciesAccepted": [ "EUR", "BTC", "ETH" ],
        "paymentAccepted":"Cash, Credit Card, Cryptocurrency",
        "url":"http://www.disneylandparis.it/"
}
</script>

If that is fine then the documentation on the schema.org website can be updated to reflect accepting cryptocurrencies found here: LocalBusiness

Something like:

And maybe provide a code example on the same page.

[ayumihamsaki]

@RichardWallis Hi I was just looking at the work you are doing and I saw this in the commits:

<span property="rdfs:comment">The currency in which the monetary amount is expressed (in 3-letter [ISO 4217](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_4217) format - For cryptocurrencies use the (ticker symbol)[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cryptocurrencies]).</span>

May I suggest not using the Wikipedia link as it is not very good and well maintained a much better link would be here: http://list.wiki/Cryptocurrencies

So my suggestion is this:

<span property="rdfs:comment">The currency in which the monetary amount is expressed (in 3-letter [ISO 4217](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_4217) format - For cryptocurrencies use the (ticker symbol)[http://list.wiki/Cryptocurrencies]).</span>

~If that is useful or not?

[sopekmir]

@ayumihamsaki , @RichardWallis: Perhaps we could consider cryptocurrencies as a "parallel" property to our existing http://schema.org/currency of the financial extension (http://schema.org/docs/financial.html) and it would become the property for types like DatedMoneySpecification, ExchangeRateSpecification, MonetaryAmount (TBD)...
What do you think?

[RichardWallis]

@ayumihamsaki That looks like an interesting link.

Before proposing using that, I would want to find out, with regard to the list.wiki site, how stable it is, who hosts it, who is behind it, how active its community is, etc. I could not ascertain this from browsing the site, or Wikipedia, or the web in general.

I would also personally comment that considering the writeup on the site makes much emphasis about complementing, and making the information it contains available to, search engines, I am a little surprised that it does not yet publish Schema.org in its pages.

[RichardWallis]

@sopekmir I think a separate cryptocurrency property is unnecessary. The currency property is capable of holding a mixture of types. All that is needed is relevant guidance in the term definition.

My current proposed version for this is:

The currency accepted.

Use standard formats: ISO 4217 currency format e.g. "USD"; Ticker symbol for cryptocurrencies e.g. "BTC"; well known names for Local Exchange Tradings Systems (LETS) and other currency types e.g. "Ithaca HOUR".

[ayumihamsaki]

@RichardWallis I did a quick search in regards to how stable their website is and found this information:

Their information is found here: http://list.wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page&action=info

I can totally understand if you prefer to link to the main Wikipedia due to link rot. (I didn't think of that issue when I made my suggestion).

[sopekmir]

@RichardWallis - I agree. Seems I just did not remember that the range of the currency property is text and can take values from other sources than ISO 4217. And as far as I see - you added the references to the cryptocurrencies for this and other relevant properties. So this seems to be resolved. Is it?

[RichardWallis]

Released in V3.4