A celebrant has written in to the Celebrant Institute asking the question: “How can I, and should I, accept crypto currency for celebrancy?”

There are three questions worth answering here: Can I? Should I? How?

Can you accept cryptocurrency for celebrancy?

Of course you can accept crypto currency for celebrancy work. Heck, some of us even give it away for free or for less than what it would cost to go to the registry office. You just need to acknowledge a few things.

  1. Cryptocurrency isn’t a single thing, it’s a genre of currencies. There are many, and most are tradeable back to the Australian dollar. I would make sure I only accepted a crypto currency that I could turn into AUD the next minute. Popular cryptocurrencies include Bitcoin, XRP, Litecoin, Dogecoin, Ethereum, Qoin, and others.
  2. There’s no need to accept every single crypto currency, you might choose one, or five, or so. Each crypto currency you accept requires its own wallet and all of a sudden you’re sending multiple wallet addresses to multiple people and it gets confusing. I personally only accept two, Qoin and Bitcoin.
  3. You need a wallet to store your crypto currency in – a crypto currency wallet is a software storage of your currency. If you don’t know much about this, I would use CoinSpot because they’re Australian and they’re legit. If you do know what a cryptocurrency wallet is then you’re free to go wherever you want to.
  4. When you accept a crypto currency for work, it’s not actually taxable income yet. It’s an asset you’ve received. It’s not until you cash it out that it becomes income as the ATO sees it, and they will. So If you get paid $1000 AUD in Bitcoin for example, at time of writing, this would be 0.02241262 Bitcoin. If you then leave it in Coinspot for a period of time, it’s quite likely that the value in AUD will change. When you sell that Bitcoin and convert it to AUD it might be worth more, or possibly less. That AUD amount is what you’ll class as income and allow the ATO to take a share.
  5. Once you’ve been paid the crypto currency it’s 100000000% up to you what you do with it. Do you sell it straight away and take the Australian dollars. Or do you trade for a little while? You’re in charge.

Should you accept cryptocurrency for celebrancy?

This is a personal issue, but if yo;’re asking, yes. I think you should accept crypto currency.

Not because crypto is cool and fancy. But because we’re in the business of creating epic weddings for people, and our job as a business person is to make the transfer of value easy and joyful. If they have Qoin, and they want to pay you in Qoin, take the Qoin. Just make sure you’re aware of the risks and you don’t get yourself too deep.

It’s easy to get involved in the trading aspect of it, but I would encourage you to stay in reality and use the crypto for either purchasing other things like you can on Qoin, or trading for Australian currency.

How do I accept cryptocurrency for celebrancy?

Instead of sending bank details like BSB and account number, or PayID, you’ll send the couple your wallet address. With your wallet address people can easily send you money, it’s like an email address. People knowing your wallet address isn’t a problem, they can’t access your wallet or funds, or hack you, with that wallet address. But don’t advertise it publicly.

If you wanted to send me Qoin for example, my wallet address might be

(it’s not my wallet address).

I would ask you to send the Australian currency price, as it currently is worth to Qoin, or whichever cryptocurrency you’re accepting. Most apps like the Qoin wallet or Coinspot allow you to convert on the fly. This is what the Qoin app looks like:

Qoin wallet

Be adventurous, be wise, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. Cryptocurrency has a massive future in Australian business and you’ve got a chance to lead the way!

As for recording the transactions, I would maintain a spreadsheet of transactions in and out, how many of each coin, at what rate, and what the resultant AUD currency was. Your account will need to know for income sake.