What is WAX?
WAX is a platform and a token that allows anyone to create a marketplace for digital assets.
From the founders of OPSkins, the #1 virtual item marketplace in the world, WAX is designed to significantly expand the $50 billion market for buying and selling video game virtual items.
The WAX Platform will allow many other kinds of digital assets to be traded, so virtually any asset that can be tokenized will benefit from WAX.
OPSkins already handles millions of digital items, and WAX will tokenize them for trading anywhere.
Why do I need the WAX Platform?
As big as the item trading industry already is, consumers must still contend with multiple challenges when buying or selling a digital object. Buyers and sellers are often in different countries and work with different currency types. Currency conversion costs, payment processing fees and credit card chargebacks can eat up the sales proceeds. This is particularly an issue for the small dollar sized transactions that make up most of the items traded. And because these items are digital, fraud is a bigger than with physical items where people must ship something to a physical address.
For example, someone in Brazil who wants to buy a digital item from a seller in Germany would have a difficult time doing so without paying high currency conversion and cross border payment processing fees. Counter-party risks, inherent in any situation where transactions are between strangers, are present for both sides.
WAX eliminates these problems through the use of cryptocurrency, smart contracts and blockchain based settlement.
The WAX Platform provides all these digital merchandising capabilities for free to the tens of thousands of video gaming community and content sites that want to take part in the $50 billion virtual item industry. Think about how profound that is. Any website owner connected to the video gaming or esports industry will be able to use the WAX platform to offer OPSkins like virtual item marketplace features with nearly zero effort.
Digital entrepreneurs can provide their audiences with the same robust ecommerce capabilities as OPSkins to allow their customers to buy and sell virtual items.
Every time an item is purchased, the WAX Platform automatically completes the settlement process with all the parties involved instantly (buyer, seller, settlement agent, affiliates, listing sites, etc). WAX ushers in a new generation of digital item “powersellers” such as those found on eBay, Amazon, or Alibaba.
Why do I need a WAX Token? Why can’t I use Bitcoin/Ethereum/or other tokens?
Given our unparalleled experience in operating digital item marketplaces, combined with our deep domain expertise in blockchain based technologies, we understand that a custom platform and token designed for the unique circumstances of virtual item trading is the optimal solution for the needs of this 400 million strong community.
The top reasons include security, transparency and the multitude of different settlement capabilities required since each game publisher creates items that are essentially different asset classes.
We’ve leveraged the experience we’ve gained building other blockchain based businesses as well as running the #1 virtual item marketplace in the world (www.opskins.com) and developed a token that is ideally suited for how digital goods are traded. The WAX utility token eliminates the need for trust between buyer and seller and can be standardized for the common transaction types occurring in this $50 billion industry.
What can I do with a WAX token?
As an individual consumer, you can safely buy digital items from anyone anywhere in the world. Marketplace owners can use the WAX platform to become an item listing site to capture new revenue opportunities from your existing customers as they buy and sell items through your site.
WAX makes it possible to discover all the virtual items available for sale across the world and securely trade those items with other enthusiasts.
Who will use WAX?
There are more than 400 million video gamers who trade virtual items today, out of about 2 billion gamers overall worldwide. WAX provides complete transparency of all available item inventory in real time and exposes that information to the global pool of buyers and sellers.
Eventually our blockchain based system could be used by video game publishers to provide more comprehensive item trading capabilities within their games.
Who is behind the WAX Platform?
The founders have operated highly successful digital businesses in item trading, cryptocurrency, venture capital and video game publishing. WAX CEO, William Quigley, is a world renowned venture capitalist who was the first institutional investor in PayPal, co-founded the widely used Tether coin used by leading crypto exchanges across the world and is the CEO of OPSkins.
WAX COO, Jonathan Yantis, invented the concept of real money virtual item trading and created the first and biggest virtual item marketplace, IGE.
WAX Lead Designer, John Brechisci Jr., is founder and CTO of OPSkins, and brings a deep understanding of the skin trading industry to WAX.
WAX President, Malcolm CasSelle, is CIO at OPSkins and formerly President and CTO at tronc / Tribune Publishing. He has built four digital media technology companies from startup to successful exit, in IPO or trade sales to public companies.
How will WAX benefit other industries?
We have a lot of ideas of how WAX could benefit other industries. Imagine if someone could send an actual physical item (i.e. a rare coin) to a vault, receive a blockchain based token in its place, and then trade that digital marker instead of the physical item? This would enable digital to physical item trading, letting the owner of a video game skin trade that item for a quantity of actual gold instead of fiat currency. The possibilities for multi-party digital to physical item trading are boundless.
By having a secure blockchain based open architecture, we hope to provide a tool for entrepreneurs everywhere to create new businesses opportunities around safe and secure item trading. That is what WAX creates.
