Games have been part of our human experience and present in all cultures around the globe for over 4000 years. As new technologies got discovered, many used the power of games to try to teach or to redefine values. Today, we see the blockchain community doing the same, adopting the same technique. Blockchain games are real, free to play and you can win cryptocurrency by playing. Check these free blockchain games and start playing to earn free cryptocurrency. Additionally, check out other methods to get free cryptocurrency.
A game is a structured form of play, usually undertaken for enjoyment and sometimes used as an educational tool. Games are sometimes played purely for entertainment, sometimes for achievement or reward.
We’ve found some ways to earn Bitcoin without depositing one single Satoshi of your own. We researched some blockchain games, which you can play for free.
Every single game listed in this article is free to play. No deposit required. So let’s talk about some games that are actually fun to play. Some require a bit of skill, while others need just some luck.
The longest-running Bitcoin RPG to date, Spells of Genesis is everything you ever wanted in a Bitcoin RPG game and more. You can play this amazing RPG on both desktop and mobile devices. This RPG mixes the trading card game genre, with a strategy based game, as well as implementing arcade-style gaming elements.
Spells of Genesis game developed by a Swiss-based company named EverdreamedSoft. This game use BitCrystal as a premium currency, include card as assets are stored on Blockchain but not on the player account.
You’ll need to collect, trade, and combine orbs in order to build the strongest gameplay deck you can in order to test them against other opponents while exploring the vast world of Askian.
Unlike other free Bitcoin RPG games, players are able to actually own their in-game items and cards outside of the game itself on the blockchain. Now keep in mind that you can exactly earn Bitcoin directly within the game, however, you do build up a collection of rare cards, which when fully upgraded, can be stored on the Bitcoin blockchain utilizing Counterparty protocol.
If you know everything about the biggest football leagues in Europe and you can put together a winning team, then this fantasy football manager game is for you. FootballCoin gives you the chance to showcase your managerial abilities by allowing you to create your perfect football team.
FootballCoin is the first game ever built entirely on blockchain and promises “A new and transparent crypto-economy”.
This blockchain game has its entire economy based on its own cryptocurrency, XFC. It features collectable footballers’ and stadium cards, you can participate in private contests with your friends and everything is based on real game stats. The teams with the highest-ranking win cryptocurrency!
The best part is that you choose how you spend your cryptocurrency. You can either spend it in the game or withdraw it and exchange it for any other crypto or fiat.
If you’re a Minecraft fan you’re going to absolutely go crazy over this game. If not, I guarantee you’ll still get addicted. This popular “sandbox game” allows players to build game worlds in which you define a story and have full control over all aspects of your creation.
The MineCraft style game includes Bitcoin as its main in-game currency which you earn by mining, trading, and interacting with other players.
Forged by the great powers of augmented reality and blockchain technologies, Augmentors puts you in control of fantastical creatures. Collect an army of powerful and rare creatures as you battle, train, buy and sell them. You, on Heroic One, will become the greatest Augmentors player in the augmented reality world.
Every single creature in your legion has its own unique history, its own past, and all of its lore is stored in the blockchain.
Beyond the Void is about to show us the power of a full-on, crypto-powered in-game economy.
Beyond the Void gives players a free-to-play interstellar Multiplayer Online Battle Arena. The secret sauce here is that the in-game economy is based on a cryptocurrency token called Nexium. What’s more, is that the in-game spaceships and items you buy are all registered on the blockchain. That means you really own your items.
This means that there is a marketplace for game items and currency that exists outside of the game that is both safe and transparent. This will come as a refreshing change for those games used on the market economies of games like World of Warcraft.
Beyond the Void’s cryptocurrency, Nexium (NXC), is a standard Ethereum ERC20 token. To get started, you’ll need to use an Ethereum wallet, such as Misk or Metamask, and load it with some Ethereum. The game assets and currency can be freely traded on the blockchain, but the developers have also made an online shop where you can buy new assets from the team or trade with other players.
Ethereum tokens like Nexium are popping up all over the Internet and in all kinds of games. Spend some time playing Beyond the Void and you’ll add to your token portfolio while leaving you the option to cash out if you want to move onto a new game.
The developers of Privateers Life are striving to take this idea even further and create an in-game economy that truly mirrors a real-life one. It’s a place where no goods can appear out of nowhere, but have to harvested, mined, or manufactured from the materials found the game.
This adds a whole new dimension to the game. You can be a part of the production of goods in the Privateers Life economy and sell them for crypto-tokens worth real money. You can think of it as the World of Warcraft gold-mining economy if all in-game items and commodities could be produced, and the gold couldn’t just appear out of nowhere causing rapid inflation.
While playing the game, you can buy things using Ludem tokens (the currency of the game) in-game from other players or from the store.
However, the goods in the premium store need to be crafted from other players by collecting all of the materials and ingredients to make them. The developers take a cut of the items sold in the premium store, and also charge a tax on items sold on their “territory.” If you want to avoid this tax as an in-game merchant, you’ll have to buy your own island and really set yourself up.
Games have traditionally had to clamp down on the real-money economies that develop around popular multiplayer games. Games like this one are taking a completely different approach and actually encouraging it. As a player, you can easily start foraging, harvesting, mining, and crafting to earn yourself an in-game income that you can easily and safely cash out on.
When it comes to features, Worldopoly really does have it all. Augmented reality, geopositioning, MMORPG, gameplay, world-building, blockchain assets, and DAG. Worldopoly combines all of these factors and creates an immersive multiplayer mobile game.
Imagine if the world was a Monopoly board you could view through your phone’s camera. You can buy streets and buildings and construct your own hotels on them. Now, imagine if you could sell parts of your empire for cryptocurrency worth real money, rent out your shop fronts to advertisers, and even raid or burn down competing players’ buildings.
Worldopoly uses two platforms for its cryptocurrency economy, Ethereum and Byteball. It uses Ethereum because it’s the most popular blockchain platform and many players are already comfortable using it. The second platform, Byteball, is offered because of its advantages over Ethereum when it comes to transactions.
The main problems with Ethereum are slow response times (~10 seconds) and high transaction costs (~$0.20-$1). These are big turn-offs for players. Byteball is a cryptocurrency platform that uses Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) technology, which is technically not even blockchain technology. You can think of it as a generalization of blockchain technology, with more relaxed rules about how transactions can be organized. Byteball’s DAG platform allows for less than one second transaction time and basically free transactions of ~$0.0001. This is much more player-friendly.
Games need to be easy and cheap for players, at least to get started. That’s why platforms with rising costs and congestion problems like Ethereum may struggle to become the cryptocurrency platform of choice for games. Playing Worldopoly can give you exposure to more practical cryptocurrency technologies, like DAG, and save you some money in transaction fees while playing the game.
This financial trading simulation has you making predictions on real financial marketplaces, including cryptocurrency markets as well as Forex. The more accurate your predictions are the more points you unlock because of it. You can then cash out your points to Bitcoin at any time.
Another great aspect to the platform is the fact that they provide you with a plethora of tutorials and resources in order to help you become a “real” successful trader.
You can earn up to a few hundred dollars worth of Bitcoin per month if you work hard at.
The game is very well laid out and has a professional interface that you’d expect to see from a fantasy sports website. The company includes both weekly and monthly contests where you can win real Bitcoin thanks to their partnerships.
Choose from a selection of trading contests hosted by various sponsors. View prizes from each contest and sign up to each one of them for free.
You begin a contest with 10,000 virtual US dollars. Your goal is to accumulate as much cryptocurrency (thus increasing your USD value) by the end of the contest period. If you can do just that, you’ll end up winning the contest and awarded your prize money in Bitcoin.
Do you know of any other free blockchain games we can add to our list? Let us know at contact@digitaltokens.io and we will be glad to update our list.
Investor interest in digital currencies has dropped in recent months. Many early investors who were eager to make gains from the ‘cryptocurrency craze’ have since moved on to other ventures, leaving a smaller group of stalwart HODL-ers behind. (HODL – means HOLD (hold you crypto; don’t sell) is a common word used by the crypto community, which was actually a spelling mistake of one of the early adopters). Today, everyone is looking for methods to earn or win cryptocurrency and Bitcoin.
But there are still reasons to be optimistic. By some measures, institutional interest in digital currencies has actually increased over 2018. At the beginning of 2018, the question was how high these coins could get. Now, looking into 2019, the better question might be how this space will adapt in order to survive.
Although trade figures for individual investors are down in many cases, institutions are climbing on board in a significant way for the first time.
Institutional investors allow for significantly larger trading volumes than most individual investors, meaning that even if there are fewer trading partners transacting in the digital currency space, the industry can still sustain itself.
Bloomberg reported in October that institutional investors have replaced high net-worth individuals as the biggest buyers of cryptocurrency transactions worth over $100,000.
According to Bloomberg, traditional investors and buyers such as hedge funds have become more involved in the cryptocurrency market through private transactions. Bloomberg also notes that miners — the biggest sellers on the market — have begun scheduling regular coin sales instead of holding or offloading them during market rallies.
There are several potential developments projected to take place in 2019 that could significantly impact institutional participation in the digital currency market. If crypto is floated on the Nasdaq or a similar exchange, for example, it will immediately get a boost in reputation — and likely, value.
For years, crypto enthusiasts have pined for a digital currency ETF (exchange-traded funds) available to mainstream investors in the U.S. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has repeatedly rejected or delayed bitcoin ETF applications to be decided upon at a future date.
One of the most talked about funds, by provider VanEck, has seen its final approval decision pushed back to February 2019. Some analysts believe that the approval of a mainstream bitcoin ETF could provide a significant jolt to the digital currency world, opening up the industry to investors eager to participate without some of the risks associated with buying and selling tokens directly. As of now, though, the future of VanEck’s fund remains to be seen.
Stablecoins are digital tokens that are pegged to a fiat currency that act as hedging mechanisms against the potential decline of underlying cryptocurrency collateral prices — and they may just be the industry’s best hope going into 2019.
Stablecoins may see growth next year for two reasons: one, a result of the long-term instability of non-centralized tokens; and two, the current leader in the stablecoin industry, Tether, is positioned to be dethroned. As one of the earliest stablecoins to reach the mainstream, tether has suffered a number of highly-publicized growing pains while the sub-industry developed. Other stablecoins have already entered the field, aiming to wrench away its dominance.
While it’s difficult to say which, if any, digital currencies will see dramatic price gains in 2019, we can say with confidence that cryptocurrency is not going away anytime soon.
Blockchain, the underlying technology behind many cryptocurrencies, has spread far outside of the digital currency industry and is likely to see new applications this year.
Read more on Blockchain technology used in non-cryptocurrency applications
Governments and regulators will continue to grapple with how to best facilitate and control digital tokens. It’s possible that the heyday of cryptocurrencies has come and gone, but we do know one thing for sure: cryptocurrencies were once positioned to change the entire financial system.
Yes, you can earn free cryptocurrency and the list of services offering free cryptocurrency is growing.
Currently, the most popular way for people to get hold of a cryptocurrency (aka electronic money) is to buy it on an exchange with fiat currencies or through mining, but there are other ways you can earn cryptocurrency without getting out your wallet. In this article, you will discover services and platforms to help you earn free cryptocurrency without investing or mining.
No matter how you call it, electronic money, cryptocurrency or digital currency is something the entire planet started to be interested in.
While mining cryptocurrency and Bitcoin isn’t the cheapest way to get cryptocurrency, new blockchain platforms have emerged and are ready to help you earn this new electronic money, which is called cryptocurrency.
As Bitcoin makes it more and more on the international news, companies have come up with a different way in which you, can take part in this blockchain world, without investing any fiat money, or mining the cryptocurrency.
Sure, by signing up for any of these apps, you won’t be able to quit your day job anytime soon. But they give you the opportunity to earn money while you practically sleep and they also provide you with valuable experience in the up-and-coming decentralized sharing economy.
Something you shouldn’t miss on is the chance of earning free cryptocurrency! Since you are already online, so why not earn cryptocurrency online?!
Where to find services which help you earn cryptocurrency without investment? Here is what we found so far. (The list of where to get free cryptocurrency is updated regularly).
A decentralized open innovation platform empowering anyone to earn cryptocurrency,
Crowdholding is a co-creation platform were you log in, give feedback and earn crypto for it. They have over 70 crypto startups and over 40,000 signups. They have new startups as well as establish coins such as SmartCash, DeepOnion and ITF. (All on CoinMarketCap).
It’s free to sign up! How do you earn free crypto? After you sign up, you can give feedback, take part in bounties and airdrops to earn free cryptocurrency without investing.
The stages of Crowdholding, according to their website:
Earn anywhere, anytime, from any device
What is Storm?
According to its website, “Storm Token is a premium cryptocurrency reward used to fuel the world’s only blockchain-supported microtask platform.”
Storm Play is an app started in 2017, which pays you Bolt for doing a simple task such as downloading apps, surveys, and quizzes.
Storm (STORM) intends to make a blockchain-based, gamified, micro-task market (Storm Marketplace) that empowers users to earn STORM ERC-20 tokens by completing different tasks.
Micro-tasks in the app have been ‘gamified’ into a reward system that allows you to easily earn tokens for playing games or trying out new products or service.
“Participate in short surveys, try out new products, watch videos, and help finish small tasks to earn rewards in Storm Token, Bitcoin, or Ethereum.”
Some of the tasks, for example, involve achieving goals in games you have to download. Some mobile gamers may find that StormPlay gets them the entertainment factor they need, all while earning cryptocurrency without investment.
Bolt is the in-app currency which you can convert to Bitcoin, Ethereum or Storm coin when you have reached the minimum withdraw limit.
Steemit, or as the founders say, ”Come for the rewards. Stay for the community,” is a Reddit-like portal which supports posting content as well as up and down-voting.
Steemit is based on a blockchain that runs on a native coin called STEEM.
Steemit’s developers say that their Blockchain, in contrast to Bitcoin’s proof-of-work, is based upon “proof-of-brain.” That is to say, cryptocurrency is generated by participants creating original content. If you are some sort of content creator, then you definitely have to have an account on Steemit and you can earn cryptocurrency without investing by simply creating the content you are really good at.
This works as follows: A certain pool of STEEM tokens is dedicated to incentivizing content creation and curation. And how exactly these tokens are distributed for specific pieces of content is determined by “crowd wisdom” – the participant community assesses the value of the content and its token reward.
LBRY is an open-source and decentralized platform for video content sharing which rewards you for content consumption. Yes, you read that right. Not only are you rewarded for content creation, but for content consumption.
Why is that? Of course, in the long run, the main point of LBRY’s economy will be the remuneration of content creators, namely with tips from content users in the app’s native LBC token (short for LBRY Credit). The app comes with a dedicated LBC wallet. Other ways to obtain LBC’s are contributions to the LBRY project and mining – see here for all the ways of earning LBC.
However, to encourage widespread adoption of the LBRY app, the LBRY team is currently providing in-app rewards for early adopters. They can be earned simply by surfing video channels and watching videos.
SMSChain is a decentralized SMS gateway. It is based upon one of the most classical sharing economy concepts: Take a resource that someone has paid for, but isn’t using, and enable that person to share this resource with others.
These messages mostly consist of standard templates, not individualized content. These templates will be defined in SMSChain nodes, and participants can choose in advance which types of content they wish to permit to go through their SIM card.
SMSChain offers exactly this marketplace, and the marketplace’s currency is their native token SMSTO. You can earn SMSTO simply by signing up for an account on the SMSChain website, and by agreeing to sell your unused SMS capacities.
In the context of SMSChain, you are known as a “miner” – similar to Bitcoin’s concept of mining. However, the mining mechanism in SMSChain is not wasteful proof-of-work, as in other cryptocurrencies, but proof-of-delivery. That means that you do the useful work of delivering SMS in order to earn your SMSTO.
The explosion of cryptocurrencies has created a market where you can offer your services and receive remuneration in cryptocurrency.
There are subreddits such as /r/Jobs4Crypto and /r/Jobs4Bitcoins, or you can simply contact ICOs if you have a desirable skill set. Got something to sell? There are also multiple sites where you can sell your unwanted items for cryptocurrency. Some examples are Bitify (a platform similar to eBay) and BazaarBay (a platform that acts like Etsy).
SweatCoin will help you earn cryptocurrency for simply walking around outside.
SweatCoin might be the app that sounds familiar to you because it’s the easiest to use, and therefore the most popular. SweatCoin pays you in a currency that will eventually be turned into actual cryptocurrency on the blockchain.
Blockchain games are taking gaming to a whole new level. And yes, playing games can actually help you earn cryptocurrency without investing. More and more startups and companies are on their way to change their business model and the gaming industry is a big part of it.
You can earn free cryptocurrency by playing arcade games such as Alien Run and collectable fantasy football games like FootballCoin if you are a football enthusiast. Let’s not forget about attention games like Block Stacker. All these games are ready to reward you for your time and attention. And if you get really good at any of them, this could a permanent way of earning free cryptocurrency.
Remember there is an essential difference between blockchain games and crypto games. The two notions mean different things.
These are some of the most in handy and obvious ways in which you too can earn free cryptocurrency without investing. If you have more suggestions, feel free to send them and we will happily add them to the list.
Remember that there is a big cryptocurrency market and it grows at an exponential rate. As always, the firsts ones are the most advantaged players.
In January, attackers stole roughly $400,000 in Stellar Lumen (XLM) coins.
In the same month, a software developer revealed the CoffeeMiner attack, a means to use public Wi-Fi networks to perform cryptojacking – the covert mining of cryptocurrency without user consent.
Facebook decided to ban the advertising of ICOs, cryptocurrencies, and binary options on the social network due to the prevalent risk of scams and fraudulent schemes.
One of Japan’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, Coincheck, was hacked, while both BitConnect and Benebit pulled an exit scam.
In February, employees at the Russian Federation Nuclear Center were arrested for using the centre’s supercomputing power to mine virtual coins.
Over in the United Kingdom, US, and Australia, government and corporate websites were infected with cryptocurrency mining software via a vulnerable third-party plugin.
In March, Google took steps to tackle the issue of fraudulent ICOs, and chose to ban ICO, wallet, and cryptocurrency consultancy services from purchasing adverts for display on the tech giant’s search engine.
Binance was forced to deal with the aftermath of a credential-stealing scheme that was used en masse to sell user funds and convert them into altcoins.
In April, a suspected case of fraud emerged with the Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) of cryptocurrency exchange Coinsecure being blamed for the loss or embezzlement of 438 Bitcoins, worth roughly $3.3 million at the time.
In May, the Bitcoin Gold (BTG) hard fork, originating from the Bitcoin (BTC) blockchain, suffered what is known as a 51% attack. In total, $17.5 million was stolen.
Taylor was entirely cleaned out of cryptocurrency and token reserves.
A tea-based blockchain project, the Shenzhen Puyin Blockchain Group, ran a fraudulent ICO and raised approximately $48 million from investors before vanishing.
In June, a research paper appeared which claimed the market for cryptocurrency-stealing malware was now worth millions of dollars, and at the same time, Coinrail was relieved of roughly 30% of its coin reserves.
Only a week later, another South Korean exchange, Bithumb lost $31.5 million to hackers.
Another ICO exit scam was also performed halfway through the year, this time by Block Broker, an organization which claimed to develop anti-fraud blockchain technologies.
During July, blockchain startup Bancor said a company wallet was compromised. While the alleged attackers apparently attempted to steal $23.5 million, but once the wallet was identified and frozen, only $12.5 million in Ethereum (ETH), alongside $1 million in Pundi X (NPXS) and $10 million in Bancor Network Tokens (BNT) was stolen.
BitConnect, which performed an exit scam in January, resurfaced in the news over August as the Indian head of the firm was reportedly arrested in Dubai. Two months later, former BitConnect investors banded together to launch a lawsuit accusing the company of fraud.
In the same month, three Chinese nationals were arrested over the alleged theft of theft of $87 million in cryptocurrencies by targeting both individual and corporate wallets.
In September, cryptocurrency exchange Zaif lost $60 million following a cyber attack in which hackers siphoned away Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and MonaCoin from hot wallets.
A vulnerability was also discovered in the Monero system that could have permitted attackers to steal vast amounts of the cryptocurrency. After a theoretical question was posted online, developers realized a serious bug in the framework existed and set to patch the problem.
In October, Pincoin operators ran off with $660 million in trader funds after pulling an ICO exit scam, which was unsurprising considering the 48% return that the organization promised investors.
In November, a 21-year-old was arrested for performing a SIM-swap attack that took a victim’s entire life savings. The attack was conducted by convincing customer service reps to redirect numbers to a handset, where it can be used to recover passwords and bypass 2FA.
A brash crypto jacking scheme was also uncovered in a Canadian university was forced to close down its network to stop the use of the institution’s power for cryptocurrency mining.
Source zdnet.com
It is obvious that the cryptocurrency industry has grown by leaps and bounds in the past 10 years since Bitcoin was born. Fintech is transforming the financial industry and more and more people are getting onboard. Shopping in-store and online is going fully digital but raising cybersecurity fears, which can be drastically reduced with a broader acceptance of cryptocurrencies as a means of payment.
Nowadays, almost anything can be paid directly with cryptocurrencies: homes, condos, boats, cars, clothing, electronics, health and pet products, food, wine, accessories, plane tickets, vacations, tools, musical instruments, as well as dating services, professional services, internet services, and, of course crypto gear.
Without pointing out the obvious, let’s look at the most interesting things digital currencies can buy you:
Mobile payment is the new trend. Being able to use a smartphone to pay for something instead of a credit card is so much more convenient.
From Paypal and Apple Pay to Mastercard’s Paypass and Visa’s Paywave with near-field communication (NFC) technology and modern POS terminals, payments have never been easier. The same privacy and security issues arise as with the rest of traditional and fiat-based financial transactions. Too much data in one place.
All currently available mobile fiat payment processors store credit card information which include all of our financial information and more. Not to mention that all that data is online and on our mobile devices everywhere we go.
Cryptocurrencies are a safer digital cash option and are ideal for mobile payments by default due to their virtual, decentralized nature.
Bitpay, one of the most successful crypto payment gateways, is processing $1 billion worth of transactions annually at a rate of a quarter million transactions per month. Coinpayments already serves millions of vendors in 200 countries and has just integrated with Bittorrent to give its 100 million users the option to pay with BTC and altcoins. Coingate serves 50,000 merchants and has processed hundreds of thousands of cryptocurrency payments, and Utrust just partnered with Payrexx and its 10,000 European merchants.
More integrations and partnerships between cryptocurrency payment processors and fiat payment processors are in the works and the market is expected to grow by 50% in the next two years.
In particular, Foton announced plans to attract 100 million users by 2020 and offer competitive features including its own stablecoin, fiat pairs, atomic swaps, a loan and escrow service, and a payment card with loyalty rewards and cash back.
So there is no doubt: millions of merchants all over the world accept cryptocurrencies, as do tens of thousands of websites.
It has been estimated that some 20 million people worldwide own cryptocurrency. Most others have heard of bitcoin and many plan on adding it to their portfolio.
Square, a credit card payment processor serving merchants, employers and mobile payment users, is gradually out-competing Paypal while also increasing its profits through BTC sales. The majority of Square’s merchant customers have expressed interest in accepting bitcoin core and a 2017 Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance study confirmed that 40% of consumers would, indeed, like to be able to make purchases with BTC.
Countries with weaker than average fiat currencies tend to favour the use of cryptos.
Turkey, Venezuela, Brazil, Australia and South Africa appear to have large numbers of cryptocurrency users. In fact, a whopping 80 percent of Australians would like to use cryptocurrencies for daily purchases.
Merchants in Eastern Europe and small western European towns seem more open toward adding bitcoin as a method of payment. Even before the 2017 cryptocurrency bull market, more than 10% of Eastern Europeans reported using cryptocurrency in place of fiat for everyday purchases.
There was a time when cash was king and financial institutions gave generous incentives to people who chose to put their hard-earned cash into institutional coffers.
Today, bank accounts, debit and credit cards, have fees associated with them — money that goes down the drain and provides no benefit.
There are debit and credit card fees, ATM fees, merchant fees, checking account fees, overdraft fees, paper fees, check fees, transfer fees, change fees, charge-back fees, foreign transaction fees, minimum balance fees, inactivity fees, false decline fees, et cetera, et cetera.
In comparison, popular cryptocurrency payment gateways like Bitpay and Coinpayments charge between 0.5% and 1% per transaction.
In most cases, a cryptocurrency account in the form of a digital wallet is entirely free and unless one chooses to invest in cryptocurrency hardware wallets or prepaid cards, other than the transaction fee, using cryptocurrency as money costs absolutely nothing.
Cryptocurrencies are a borderless means of exchange allowing for instant and cost-effective transactions across the world.
There is no waiting, no international fees and no limitations as to who can or cannot send funds to whom or when and where those funds can be accessed.
All that is needed is an internet-enabled device like a smartphone and someone without access to a banking institution is given an alternative solution with which they can pay bills, earn income, safe-keep their funds, make purchases and conduct business.
Using cryptocurrencies while travelling adds an extra layer of security and can be used as a remote source of emergency funds that can be accessed without an ID, a bank account, credit cards, a wire transfer or even a personal computer device.
Unfortunately, there are customers who make a purchase, receive the items they ordered and even use them only to cancel their payment. They can do this because fiat payments are not instant.
With cryptocurrencies, things are quite different.
Once a transaction has occurred, there is no turning back.
Funds ‘travel’ from one wallet to another, the transaction is recorded and it cannot be reversed. This is not to say that a customer cannot return an item and request a refund by communicating directly with the vendor. Of course, they can.
What they cannot do is place an order, pay for it, receive it and then get the sum they paid back on their account because of money back policies overseen by online payment processors and credit card companies.
Charge backs are meant to prevent fraud and yet they often accomplish the very opposite. In this instance, cryptocurrency works the same way as cash. After you’ve taken the item you paid for with cash, you can’t go back to the store with a damaged or used item, never mind empty-handed, and demand your money back.
Accepting cryptocurrency online has never been easier. Shopify and Etsy merchants can select to accept BTC, BCH, and altcoins. Woocommerce and Easy Digital Downloads vendors can use WordPress plugins like Mycryptocheckout for the purpose.
Shapeshift gives customers the choice to pay with dozens of cryptocurrencies. Shapeshift is integrated with cryptocurrency payment processors like Bitpay and Coingate, and cryptocurrency wallets like Coinomi and Keepkey.
Moreover, there is Purse.io, an online platform where users can buy items from Amazon with cryptocurrency and it is also integrated with Shapeshift, as are Magento and Openbazaar. Setting up cryptocurrency payments is super simple and quick and merchant transaction fees are 60-70%lower compared to fiat transaction fees.
Banks and credit institutions, as well as retailers and service providers, obtain and retain too much of their customers’ personal and financial information.
Details including our name, address, employers, social security number, net worth, assets, investments, account balances, credit score, credit line, and transaction history, along with everything we do and buy, who we associate with, when, where, etc. comprise our personal, professional and financial data sets. With traditional financial institutions and traditional fiat currency, we can no longer preserve our privacy.
Cryptocurrency transactions provide an alternative by limiting the amount of transaction data to mere numbers also known as cryptocurrency wallet addresses and transaction IDs confirming that a wallet-to-wallet transaction took place.
A cryptocurrency payment processor acting as a third party will typically require your name (and shipping address for the delivery of physical goods), but the rest of your information will remain private as long as you don’t connect your bank or credit card account and transact solely in BTC and altcoins.
Source news.bitcoin.com
According to the paper — entitled “Cryptocurrencies: Overcoming Barriers to Trust and Adoption” — bitcoin and cryptocurrencies will hit the mainstream as a way of paying for goods and services within the next decade.
As Imperial College London professor William Knottenbelt put it:
“There’s a lot of scepticism over cryptocurrencies and how they could ever become a day-today payment system used by the man on the street. In this research we show that cryptocurrencies have already made significant headway towards fulfilling the criteria for becoming a widely accepted method of payment.”
The three criteria for mass adoption the researchers laid out are:
While this may sound callous, adoption should be easy…or at least easier.
Adopting a baby should be easier and if it were, more people would go through the process of adoption. The same rationale can be applied to cryptocurrency and cryptocurrency payments. Right now, regardless of what the expert developers and pro-crypto people believe, adoption cryptocurrency is too difficult.
That is just a fact. If it were so easy, then more businesses, institutions and individuals would have done it already.
Bitcoin is not obscure. Bitcoin is not unknown. Certainly, Bitcoin does not suffer from a lack of popularity. Even Jeff Sprecher, the CEO of the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) and the Chairman of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) believes that Bitcoin has a bright future ahead as the according to Sprecher:
“Somehow Bitcoin has lived in a swamp and survived.”
That says a lot, and Sprecher is not the only CEO from the institutional finance world that recognizes the growing value of Bitcoin and other digital currencies.
In a nutshell, the value exists, the theoretical and applicable use cases exist too. But merging existing technologies into a universal product that can be easily integrated into or to replaces traditional payments infrastructure is not yet feasible.
In order to achieve mass adoption, and perhaps another bull run in 2019, greater efforts and attention must be paid to new protocols focused on facilitating super-fast, universal transactions.
It makes sense to assume that as more individuals use cryptocurrency for payments, the crypto community will transition from the casino-like speculation that thrives on hype and illusions of market cap grandeur to the development of products that can be easily applied in everyday life.
Real positive change will not come as a result of the name calling and criticism by one blockchain startup of another but from the collaboration, promotion, and support of projects that push for a real-world use case that is easily adopted.
A handful of fantastic projects are already on the path to delivering very useful solutions. The cryptocurrency space would benefit immensely from each developer supporting such projects.
While early adopters might jump at the opportunity to become one of the first in a new economy, the average user has one question: What will I spend this on?
Crypto projects need to build products with real use cases, and this can be done by listening to what we, their consumers, actually want — especially in digital environments.
Businesses — tech companies, specifically — have access to a wealth of insight from their users. However, the big monopolies only care about and extract consumer data that they can sell to advertisers to make money, instead of learning how the users would like them to improve their experience.
Someone might be interested in spending crypto if an app, platform or service that I regularly use created new features that could only be unlocked with cryptocurrency.
In order to understand how these currencies benefit us, average consumers need something basic to spend these tokens on, and the virtual world is where these introductory opportunities await.
Once there’s a digital good that people want to have (and they must pay for it with crypto), the next question is: “How do I get enough tokens to purchase it?”
Users can go to an exchange to trade fiat for crypto, but having a way to earn it without dipping into their pockets would be beneficial.
Digital environments easily lend themselves to creating simple ways for people to earn crypto that they can then use on the virtual goods they want.
Maybe some would consider completing an online task such as a survey for traditional fiat but would do that for instant cryptocurrency which they can later use to pay for a special future in their favourite app.
By simplifying access to crypto, more mainstream consumers will be able to begin thinking about using it.