Taking USDT for marketplace work: what actually goes wrong

Two years of accepting stablecoins for infrastructure work, a few hundred payments. Writing up the failure modes because the "just accept crypto" advice skips all of them.

Things that have gone wrong

• Wrong chain. Someone sends USDT on a network your wallet does not support. Recoverable sometimes, expensive always. Now I state the chain three times
• Price moves between invoice and payment. Rare with stablecoins, not impossible. I now quote in USD and invoice for 24 hours only
• Buyer sends from an exchange, exchange flags it, funds freeze for 11 days. Twice
• Tax. A stablecoin payment is still income and the bookkeeping is worse, not better
• Buyer sends 98% because they paid the fee out of your side

What I do now
One chain only, stated in the thread and again in the invoice. Minimum $50 because fees eat anything smaller. Escrow for first orders over $300, through the forum, not through a third party someone DMs me about.

What I will not do
Accept anything that is not a major stablecoin. I was paid in a memecoin once as a favour to a regular, and by the time it cleared it was worth 60% of the invoice. That was my mistake, not his.

Wrong chain is 90% of my support load on crypto payments. I now reject the payment and ask them to resend rather than try to recover it, which feels harsh and costs less.

The exchange-freeze one is the real risk. If a buyer sends from a platform that flags your address, you are arguing with a company that has no reason to talk to you.

The 98% thing happens on every single first order with a new buyer. I put "you pay network fees" in bold and it still happens.

Escrow through the forum for first orders is the right call and I wish more sellers in this section did it. The sellers who refuse escrow are telling you something.

That is the single most useful heuristic for a buyer in the marketplace, and it costs nothing to apply.

Bookmarking. Thanks for writing it up properly instead of teasing a course.