A Use Case for Crypto
Eight weeks ago, the Boltzmann team arrived at our office in Berkeley ready to put in a final push before launching our subscription retail tier, which contains filtered news, a funds database, portfolio management tools, and hour-granularity utility metrics. Everything was falling into place and it came time for us to switch out of our payment processor’s sandbox environment into production. We submitted all the relevant application information and promptly moved on to other tasks while waiting the requisite twenty-four hours for our account to clear. The only thing was, our account application was rejected. Believing there was some sort of mistake, we contacted a representative, who informed us that they were no longer supporting companies in the crypto space.
We applied to seven other payment processors. One-by-one they all rejected us. Having heard our case, a couple lawyers even volunteered to write on our behalf to the top processors to vouch for the legitimacy of our business. Nothing worked; we had successfully been barred from the economy. It was in that moment that we truly understood one of crypto’s most fundamental use cases: the ability to send and receive value without having to ask anyone else for permission.
While continuing to explore a number of alternative payment options, we initiated our B2B efforts and began providing raw data to some of the best quant hedge funds in the industry. With these achievements in hand we are happy to return to our retail product today with more flexibility and the resolve to enhance the risk management strategies of everyday investors.
Fortunately, it just so happens that we can use this new censorship-resistant form of payment. Our subscription retail site is now live accepting crypto as its only form of payment. We admit that not having the ability to grant free trials, assess recurring payments, or issue chargebacks makes for a less desirable user experience, which is a common refrain of the industry’s critics. But that misses the point almost entirely, because without crypto there simply would be nothing to experience.
Living in the United States, it’s easy to take our transparent and well-regulated market economy for granted. While our episode with the industry’s largest payment processors has been frustrating, it pales in comparison to what individuals living in opaque, tightly controlled systems with perverse incentives must confront on a daily basis. In a way, this experience only reaffirmed our motivations and intent to build reliable, transparent, and individually empowering products for a fundamentally transformative industry.
