Bitcoin Forum

Hi, everybody.
I have an idea to create a new service: crypto marketplace for goods, where as well as on ebay you can buy and sell goods for cryptocurrency. Users will be able to conduct transactions using smart-contracts.
What do you think about this idea?

Depends upon which particular coins you have in mind. Also, have you thought out the implications of crypto volatility thoroughly?

Basically, any keyboard warrior can give you feedback, and that's at most worth $0.02! So, your best bet is to construct a pilot project and see how that works; then, scale from any traction you obtain.

It's an idea that merits testing, so plan about acing the execution, especially if you can bootstrap it.  Wishing You all the best in this endeavour!

I've already seen several platforms like that. https://neverfiat.com/ is just one of them
So there is market for such a service, how big this market is though I don't know. The only people who will use it are the ones who have some crypto already.

There are a lot of websites that have done this before; your problem will be marketing your site where it will cost you a lot of money to make the products in your market attractive to the ambitions of buyers and sellers alike.
This type of investment needs money, time and patience to be profitable
It is better for you as a start to evaluate the cost of your project and the funding you can make before you start

that would be a great idea, good/services to cryptoexchanges could sustainably reduce the volatility of the industry, if there will be a waste protection police and a police that secures sufficient access to consumption capacities for the common man.

Thank u guys for all ur opinions.
It's just an idea, but who knows, maybe someday it will transform into real project ;)

The idea is great if executed properly

We need lots of services like that in crypto world. Although lots of consideration should take place before an actual success will happened, once it reached the status of being successful, surely it will bring a positive feedback.

Well then idea will remained an idea until it will goes live. :)

With thia kind of transaction, there is only one thing in my mind. What crypto would you be using and what would be the basis of your price. The continues volatility can make the value of an item difficult if the price displayed is based on crypto. For ex. A dress worth 0.5 ETH. There would be some time that the value would be up or down. Better to have dollar as price and the conversion of crypto would be the payment.

I am sure there are a lot of similar projects/ICOs doing the same thing. Take a look at marketplaces like storiqa, Bazista, INS ecosystem and so on. They are already partnering with a number of production companies and the investors are having a good time with the profits. Not currently because of the bull market though. Still these these are long term hodl for the inevstors.

But does OP have something new to offer? If you are going to launch a new project it has to have certain uniqueness in its concept. Otherwise it will just not sell.

I will surely be interested in such idea and its going to be a cool one. But I am sure you must be aware that it might not be easy for it to be acceptable to the crypto market without some serious work in doing publicity because people still trust the established fiat market place such as Ebay, Amazon, AliExpress, ChinaBrands etc more because of the controls they have put in place to ensure customers are getting their goods.

Its not enough to create a site without ensuring that the ancillaries to ensure that the objective of the site is also put in place. For a market place like this, two things you need to get right is

1. The Escrow: Since you wont be able to control the habit of both the buyers and the sellers of the platform. This should be as a matter of that could quickly run down the site if any bad review should come from that end.

2. Shipping Logistics: This is another serious concern that you need to get right as the market will not be localised, the shipping options and then number of days, the insurance to protect the items purchased. All of that needs to be gotten right while other challenges are dealt with as they arise.

The market is pretty small I think, I've seen many of these sorts of websites come and go after running for a year or so.
Take Openbazaar for example, their sales figures are really nothing to write home about.

Okay, with Openbazaar people need to actually install an app, so that's an additional action that many people aren't willing to take.
Not that e-bay like websites for crypto are doing any better though, just look at some of the listings on these websites.

https://forra.io/ (not launched yet)
https://bitify.com/  -- crap listings
https://itcoinbay.com/ -- LOL, their featured listings don't even have any bids

Of course that would be a great idea to see some service like Ebay but crypto friendly. Also there's some websites that offer crypto's as payment never had the full support perhaps because of poor marketing. I mean its a niche market, so if you target a wrong audience then your websites will not have any potential customers. So the market is not saturated so its going to be fun so see more websites offering crypto's to conduct transaction. But be sure to cover lots of issues though like shipping worldwide and the duty fees and tax as well.

I think most people would agree that centralized ecommerce is not a good idea, because they are easily corruptable and if pseudo anonymous Bitcoin users, use these centralized sites, they tend to divulge their identity and then pseudo anonymity means nothing. Openbazaar already offer a good service, but the installation of software makes it complicated and less desirable to use.  ::)

Yes, we need some competition for eBay, but is another centralized service the solution?  ???

There are already lots of sites do really applied this thing but basing on those results or stats or just simply observing you can really see that theres no soo much interest regardless to other similar sites out there since I'm not yet too aware on those existence because I don't really care at all to use up all of these.For op's plans then he should really done something unique that would really caught up some potential users.
Maybe there are several users but don't expect that it would be much.

It’s a good idea and once you get it up and running we would be more than happy in partnering with you.

Find out more here: www.hubrisone.com

M

the idea is good, marketplace for goods and using cryptocurrency as a payment method. But you need to sure one thing is the delivery, if it's not differrent from ebay example, why would customer choose you, because payment with blockchain costs money and it's not a 100 percent safe.

Everyone would be interest with this type of idea.

I've seen before that some are doing this actually until today but many are still doubtful on some since there are many the same websites that are coming out and lack of reputation so consumers are in fear of getting to the wrong marketplace. Where have you been OP what can you say about the opinions of most here?

The idea is good, but difficult to implement. How do you want to realize it, and how would you name it?

Your idea is good but could you stand the consequences for running that? Remember there are huge marketplace existing which have gather more reputation and trust by the sellers so by this you will surely struggle for searching some good sellers to spend their time on your platform and also must have a good fundings for anything since at the first place running a project will cost if not thousand millions of dollars.

There are several similar projects ongoing right now and what makes yours special? And on top of that, it takes many years of hard-work to actually establish a good online market-place. How can you convince the investors that you will not give up the idea after a few months?

Looking for a great customer support and quality service? I would like to introduce to you the Crowdcreate team which can effectively grow your community better and they are a global team of crypto enthusiasts. Check their site - www.crowdcreate.us.

You need a good team for realization of such a bright idea. Among other issues you need a good promoter. It's not an easy thing to persuade internet-users visit your resource and prefer your service but not another. I think professional promotion could help you succeed in it and of course you're to offer more than your rivals.
Believe in your project, try too much and you could reach the goal!

Ha-ha funny funny... It may be humorous to you that we don't have any bids, or that many auctions for that matter, but it's a little disappointing to say the least for us. We think that there are two primary reasons that we haven't established much traction as of yet. 1) HODLers don't want to spend their bitcoin & 2) People that aren't HODLers don't really understand even how to use bitcoin. We have had some bids, but mostly from non-bitcoin users. One lady bid 1 BTC last year for an item that was priced at a fraction of a bitcoin. We had to explain to her that https://itcoinbay.com/ (https://itcoinbay.com/) is a bitcoin only auction site and that one bitcoin was the equivalent of thousands of dollars, so she freaked out and ask us to cancel her bid which we of course agreed to. She said that she would have to look into Bitcoin before placing another bid, but she apparently had the impression, based on what she said, that Bitcoin is some kind of scam. Another lady 'purchased' a Seller membership, but obviously had no clue how to use Bitcoin because she asked us "where do I pay?" It's frustrating to say the least.

Anyway, before we started this site we did some looking around and at the time (summer of 2017) we were unable to find any bitcoin auction sites. Not long after starting our site, we did stumble on to a few and even tried to use them, one being Cryptopia, which although it looked really nice, in reality, at least as far as auctions, was a joke. We listed an item for a very low price but got bids that were 1/1000th or less of what we were asking. I think Cryptopia is no more.

In addition to the two reasons listed above, another difficulty with a bitcoin auction site is the volatility in the market. When bitcoin was down before the recent spike, some of our auctions were real steals, however no one took advantage of the opportunity even though we didn't adjust the auction prices. When the market swings upward, there is a solution for bidders with the Best Offer option which we encourage our Sellers to implement due to this exact reason.

Exposure of course is another major factor in our situation.

In spite of all of the above, and all other issues, we don't plan on going anywhere. We are working slowly but surely at building our user-base and listings and maybe someday there will be enough Bitcoin users and or Bitcoin will stabilize at a level where HODLers don't mind spending a little, until then we will bide our time.

Many have suggested that people are reluctant to pay a membership fee, but we don't believe that is necessarily the case as we have made many special offers from time to time with very few takers. For instance, we are new here at this forum and so we offered a free Seller membership the last two days and only a few people signed up. At the moment we are offering half price through the weekend for anyone listing bitcointalk as the Referrer. It appears that most people don't even take the time to look at what they could gain. As soon as we have 100 Sellers, we will give away some very nice prizes in our New Member Contest (drawing). Grand Prize is a drone worth almost $2000, 2nd Place is .1 BTC, etc. So in these offers, for absolutely nothing, except for the effort of taking a few moments to read, then register and 'purchase' (for free) a Seller membership with us, much could be gained. Maybe people are so used to scams in the cryptocurrency arena that they don't even take the offers seriously? We don't make false promises as so many companies/people soliciting investors etc. do, but in addition to the possibility of buying and selling with us, one could win in our Contest and actually earn bitcoin in our referral Program. We pay the Referrer .001 BTC for each paying Seller they send us.

The reason of course for the fee is to serve as an escrow for auctions, and since "we at itcoinBay.com do not attach ourselves nor our members to fiat currencies, bank accounts or credit cards, we have developed a fee-based system for the purpose of accountability. In the age of $1000 cell phones, $5+ coffee and Washington, D.C., we don’t feel at all apprehensive about this fee." The fee is also sort an entrance exam of sorts (do you know what Bitcoin is and not only how to actually use it but do you have the capacity to use it--do you have a wallet?), and the vast majority so far have failed the test unfortunately.

"Also, at our site, no 3rd party payment or conversion systems, downloads, platform installs, special wallets, etc. are required. We use only Peer to Peer transactions as envisioned by Satoshi Nakamoto. After all, is this is not how Bitcoin was intended to be used?"

This is perhaps a long-winded response to your jab, but at least you spelled our name right.  ;) Thanks for noticing us!