Boy Has Crypto Changed

[give42]

Haven't taken a serious look at crypto since 2012 and holy c#$@ has it changed. But looking around I've really been stricken by how little the ecosystem has diversified (on first glance). So I'd love to ask: Where are the big economic hubs in crypto outside of exchanges? I'm curious about the marketplaces for physical things and which communities are thriving.

Thanks in advance!

[Yogee]

Haven't taken a serious look at crypto since 2012 and holy c#$@ has it changed. But looking around I've really been stricken by how little the ecosystem has diversified (on first glance).

I haven't been around crypto that long compared to you but I can tell that it has become more of an investment asset now rather than a currency. Institutional investors are taking over.

So I'd love to ask: Where are the big economic hubs in crypto outside of exchanges?

Gambling platforms.
Lending platforms (DeFi).

I'm curious about the marketplaces for physical things and which communities are thriving.

Openbazaar.org announced they're closing last year but they got additional donations to keep the platform alive. I just visited their site and I can see why only a few are using it.

There are popular marketplaces like Amazon that indirectly accepts bitcoin [you'll have to purchase giftcards]. Platforms like Purse.io allows you to purchase on Amazon and get 15% discount as an incentive.

[mk4]

If you're a bitcoin as a store-of-value guy: you're in luck, because institutions are piling in to hold bitcoin and take advantage of bitcoin's scarcity.

If you're a bitcoin for payments guy: tough luck, not that much adoption for payments yet besides your typical servers/VPNS/proxies/etc.

[hugeblack]

What do you mean by big economic hubs? Bitcoin is still used as an investment or a store of value rather than a currency to make daily payments, so few sites accept Bitcoin payments directly.
Other than that, there are payment gates that accept Bitcoin payments and send money to the other party with paper money. You can also buy gift cards and use them to top up your balance.

[amishmanish]

If its crypto that you are asking about then the most thriving community would be that of DeFi platforms and the trend of managing the tokenomics using a DAO.
There are people who sincerely want to build products that can replicate a traditional financial system but without the centralized control, manipulation and fees extortion associated with big banks and investment institutions. In a lot of cases, those people are putting considerable time and money to distribute the idea. The numbers for this community comprise of a lot of people from developing countries looking for a quick buck. There is a solid group of people who jump into every project and then run big operations to ensure visibility. This is meant to serve the "pumpamentals"; essentially fake advertising to create hype and pump these projects and rake in profits.

Yet, there are quite a few that have survived these wild days and are going ahead with communities of lenders, buyers, traders who are actually discussing and voting on proposals that concern fee-sharing rates, emission rates etc to manage the tokenomics. It is still hard to distinguish the scams from the sincere ones but people have put in almost 26 Bn into these DeFi projects till now.

The physical marketplace has not really thrived much. OpenBazaar has closed and the closest to using BTC for those of us post-2017 has been exchanging them for Amazon gift cards to buy stuff.

[mk4]

It's not that bad, there are some merchants which sell gift cards and many small business accept Bitcoin, see
https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin/who-accepts/
https://www.cryptowisser.com/merchants/

Ehh not necessarily bad per se, but if you were a Bitcoiner from 2012 and you're going to look at the payments adoption in contrast to the price rise from 2012, it sure is underwhelming. For a price rise of 10,000%+ you'd probably expect businesses like Amazon to be accepting bitcoin already lol.

[RickDeckard]

It's not that bad, there are some merchants which sell gift cards and many small business accept Bitcoin, see
https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin/who-accepts/
https://www.cryptowisser.com/merchants/

Ehh not necessarily bad per se, but if you were a Bitcoiner from 2012 and you're going to look at the payments adoption in contrast to the price rise from 2012, it sure is underwhelming. For a price rise of 10,000%+ you'd probably expect businesses like Amazon to be accepting bitcoin already lol.

I've got to agree with this (sadly). Any other kind of behavior would already make institutions / individual shoppers try really hard to implement ways of benefiting it. While we've seen some positive news in the last couple of months it's still shy when compared to the prise rise that @mk4 mentioned.

Still one can hope that once a major institution implements it as a payment service others could follow, who knows?

[mk4]

I've got to agree with this (sadly). Any other kind of behavior would already make institutions / individual shoppers try really hard to implement ways of benefiting it. While we've seen some positive news in the last couple of months it's still shy when compared to the prise rise that @mk4 mentioned.

Still one can hope that once a major institution implements it as a payment service others could follow, who knows?

It's really not their fault though. There's a reason why — because there's simply not that much demand. And as long as Lightning Network doesn't get adopted by the masses, then we can forget bitcoin payments for now. Exchanges needs to go first, and not retail eCommerce sites because it's where most bitcoin move in-and-out.

[BIT-BENDER]

It's not that bad, there are some merchants which sell gift cards and many small business accept Bitcoin, see
https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin/who-accepts/
https://www.cryptowisser.com/merchants/

Ehh not necessarily bad per se, but if you were a Bitcoiner from 2012 and you're going to look at the payments adoption in contrast to the price rise from 2012, it sure is underwhelming. For a price rise of 10,000%+ you'd probably expect businesses like Amazon to be accepting bitcoin already lol.

I think you made much deep reasoning here, with that price increase And adoption hasn't gone ballistic you will wonder why, the price has already shown Bitcoin excites people and should be optional to employee for there means they want their payment in, I think this can work for self employed Bitcoi-ners to pay their subordinate/workers in Bitcoin, after making it clear at the beginning before they take the Job, creating more jobs paying in Bitcoin, if this were to Happen with the massiveness of people already in Bitcoin, this would be boosting to adoption.

[20kevin20]

Ehh not necessarily bad per se, but if you were a Bitcoiner from 2012 and you're going to look at the payments adoption in contrast to the price rise from 2012, it sure is underwhelming. For a price rise of 10,000%+ you'd probably expect businesses like Amazon to be accepting bitcoin already lol.

For someone who's been around since 2012, I think they are probably more like dreaming than rationally thinking if they still hoped that Amazon would end up accepting BTC. Amazon is thriving off the decentralization and monopolization, so are most of those other corporations. If Bitcoin gave them any opportunity and advantage (for control, not monetary advantage!), they'd get into the game as well. I guess it's hard for someone like Bezos to choose between letting the poor get into a better social status and his corportation making an even larger fortune by supporting a decentralized system. Must suck to be the owner of a corp during Bitcoin's boom.

[nelson4lov]

Not a lot has changed when you consider Bitcoin's technology and adoption progress of the first couple of years and now. Everyone seems to be more concerned with the price and when BTC would make a new all time high.

I believe that we have seen a stagnated growth because there's an increase in user base, but the tech is still the same - expensive and slow. That's why some startups hold off on integrating it as a payment method. It's a norm these days for everyone to care about when Bitcoin will hit $100K but seems happy to pay between $10 - $40 for network fees.

[hatshepsut93]

Gambling and darknet markets, that's where the most of non-trading crypto activity is happening. Unfortunately, there's very little progress outside of that, and a lot of places that claim to accept Bitcoin are actually doing it via proxies, and in my book that doesn't count. For real mainstream adoption as a currency we need production-ready Lightning Network to solve the problem with fees, and less volatile price, which will happen on its own when Bitcoin will get out of its novelty phase.

[passwordnow]

Where are the big economic hubs in crypto outside of exchanges? I'm curious about the marketplaces for physical things and which communities are thriving.
Thanks in advance!

Just browsing through the forum, you'll see sections where members can exchange, sell, buy goods, stuff, and services. It's on these sections which you can check on your own.

• Services
• Goods
• Computer hardware
• Digital goods
• Collectibles

There are some other sections that I'd like to add but they're not into physical market.

[give42]

Thanks everyone! Yeah this all answered my question. It's a shame. There is so much more potential for this tech to really open up small scale businesses to the public. I remember for awhile there was some effort being put into a decentralized mail system, an Uber DApp should be a thing. It's a shame that there isn't a bit more diversity in this alternate economy.

That said, crypto-kitties are pretty impressive 

Anyways, take care and thanks for the insights!

[mk4]

I remember for awhile there was some effort being put into a decentralized mail system, an Uber DApp should be a thing.

I wouldn't be surprised if there was already such an attempt, but ended up failing altogether because people realized that something being "decentralized" with them having a certain token solely for that purpose isn't all rainbows and unicorns.