I’m like a kid in a candy store when it comes to the burgeoning world of cryptocurrency.
One of the coolest parts is the ease with which crypto enables markets in areas previously difficult to monetize. True, many of these applications don’t technically necessitate the blockchain, but it makes them easier and faster in many cases. (Plus, “tokenizing” things just feels kinda fun).
Micropayments alone – the ability to exchange fractions of a cent since fees are so low – open a world of possibility. Ideas I’ve dreamed about are being launched and beta tested now. Things like paying people to open/respond to emails, paying to post/share/comment on content or getting paid for the same, paying sites you visit directly instead of paying in the form of suffering through ads that lag pages and are generally terrible, etc.
Really, there are already markets in all these things, they’re just less efficient because they have to ration with things like time, availability, and random luck. Monetizing these markets means gaps between supply and demand can adjust faster for more value all around. If you can put a price on something, you can make it more efficient!
If you want to test a few of these out, you can check out Yours.org, a content platform I’ve been playing with and posting to. Or you can email me via Earn, where a $1 payment guarantees a response (I normally respond anyway, but fun to play with this).
Who knows which versions of these applications will succeed and in what ways, but there’s no denying that markets in everything are getting better every day!