Nobody Wants Bitcoin
I’ve been working full time in the bitcoin industry for two years now.
I started by writing hundreds of blog posts about digital currencies. Then, a year ago, I started ZapChain (funded by Boost VC, Adam Draper, Billy Draper and Tim Draper).
ZapChain is the only community platform in the world where people reward each other with bitcoin for great content instead of just clicking a “like” or “upvote” button (anyone can create a community). We’ve been growing 27% month/month for the past 3+ months and we’ve been used by everyone from Paul Vigna and Michael Casey* from The Wall Street Journal to the epic rapper Talib Kweli.
But, there’s a big problem.
Nobody wants bitcoin.
I gave my little sister $100 worth of bitcoin for Christmas this year. You know what she said?
“Matt, I’m trying to buy myself a new phone and was wondering if instead of 100 dollars in bitcoin you could give me 100 dollars?”
Bitcoin is awesome because it is incredibly divisible and has very very low transaction fees. This means that for the first time ever you can send tiny amounts of money to people, like half a cent, or 5 cents. This previously wasn’t possible because most payment processors, like credit cards, charge 20–30 cents per transaction. Because of bitcoin we were able to turn ZapChain into a fascinating platform where people send each other tiny amounts of money instead of just clicking “like”.
But, not everyone wants bitcoin (yet), and this is bitcoin’s biggest pain point.
We can totally fix it though.
This is what needs to happen:
1. Bitcoin needs to be super easy to spend.
If I have bitcoin, I need to be able to spend it anywhere, and I need to be able to do this very very easily. If my sister wants to buy her new phone with bitcoin she should be able to do so.
This is who’s working on solving this problem right now:
- Fold: Use bitcoin to buy giftcards for 20% off at Starbucks and Target. Join their community on ZapChain.
- PurseIO: Use bitcoin to buy anything on Amazon for 5% to 20% off. Join their community on ZapChain.
- Shift Card: A debit card that lets you spend bitcoin anywhere and pulls it directly out of your Coinbase account.
- Airbitz: A mobile app that has Fold integration, giving you access to instantly purchase gift cards at Starbucks and Target. Join their community on ZapChain.
- Coinbase: Easily buy, sell, and store bitcoin. Join their community on ZapChain.
2. There needs to be more services that are only made possible because of bitcoin technology.
This will make it advantageous for someone to have bitcoin versus their local currency.
This is who’s working on solving this problem right now:
- ZapChain: Anyone can create a community, for any topic, and people reward each other with bitcoin for great posts and insightful comments. Bitcoin is used as a reward “Nice post, here’s some bitcoin!” and as an incentive “Answer this question and you’ll get bitcoin!”. Join the community on ZapChain.
- ChangeTip: Tip bitcoin to people on social media. Join their community on ZapChain.
- 21: APIs and hardware for developers to build bitcoin enabled products and services (microtransactions, machine to machine payments, etc.) Join their community on ZapChain.
- JoyStream: Earn bitcoin for seeding torrents. Join their community on ZapChain.
Not everyone wants bitcoin yet, but that’s ok. Not everybody wanted the internet in the beginning either.
The bitcoin industry has come a long way, especially in the last year, and I’m looking forward to the future where it becomes easier to spend bitcoin and there are more products unique to the technology. Until then, we are going to continue to improve ZapChain and enable more and more people to earn bitcoin by being insightful and interesting.
It’s going to take every bitcoin entrepreneur to push hard to make their products better and easier to use, and investors to do a good job at spotting the opportunities.
Bitcoin and blockchain can only develop as quickly as we execute.
If you want to learn more about bitcoin, and even earn some, come join us in the bitcoin community on ZapChain.
