Hi, I'm Ray.
Grew up in NYC working in my parents newsstand and I love bitcoin.
Nine months ago we noticed no one was doing bitcoin on the street for retail so I put up a web app and called it easybitz, after a slang term a lot of folks used in the late 80's in NYC. We did a video about the first merchant on the system Kay.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pEqM0dgQsQIt went Viral. He got on national news and so did we.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edeRqUgjmzcWe made it super easy for merchants to try Bitcoin.
http://easybitz.com/merchantThey didn't even need internet or a smart phone with our zero click system.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hhqo0AgfaB8We charge zero fees and were always there for our merchants even in person. We spent the next eight months working hard but quietly.
We got thousands of merchants signing up from all over the world. Even though we were in New York City, most of our merchants were from Northern Europe and Asia. As the bitcoin price was at it's peak of nearly $1200 we saw extreme activity and it was raining bitcoins.
We began to notice a disturbing new pattern however... after a few transactions it would just stop....
The problem was organic, there were simply not enough folks with Bitcoin to go around. Some shops like Cafe Zecca in Korea had bitcoin biz everyday because they are deep in the Bitcoin community but most merchants would be lucky to see even one sale with bitcoin. Merchants wouldn't bother to train their staff and as the staff changed a place that once accepted bitcoin would have no idea what bitcoin was.
This is the reason you find more merchants on
http://coinmap.org who don't accept bitcoin than those who do. The coin map project is awesome and it has helped us and the entire scene.IT was a vicious cycle because folks who go out to try and spend their btc and when they couldn't they'd lose confidence in the system and people would then spend less btc on the ground , thus those merchants who were accepting btc got less and less business.... We began to see that a lot more was needed than just a retail payment processor and a map.
To really make this all come together and make bitcoin an everyday thing for retail business we needed a LIVING map and a system that would connect the bitcoin community to the small merchant on the ground. So we built our Live Map.
http://blog.easybitz.com/2014/10/05/bitcoin-needs-a-living-map/Much more than just another dead bitcoin directory. It had to be alive. Each time a merchant accepted bitcoin they would be bumped up tot he top of the map, like a thread in a forum, bringing them exposure from the bitcoin community and giving the community confidence that they really did accept bitcoin! The map works right on on
http://easybitz.com and it supports over 89,000 cities, villages and hamlets on the planet earth. We didn't wanna leave anyone out. Bitcoin is for all of us and we see bitcoin taking hold EVERYWHERE.
NOTE: merchants must use our pos to be bumped to the top. No other way to do this as we could see. Please correct if wrong.
Besides the map we also have a leaderboard for each city. You can get ranked in each merchant, city, state, country, region or even the world as the biggest Bitcoin supporter. You get points by signing up merchants, friends and soon by spending bitcoin, once we launch our super simple retail wallet. It is like four square for bitcoin.
We need to begin mobilizing the bitcoin community to support the merchants supporting bitcoin. Bitcoin began as grass roots and it the jumps of evolution it will go through will all be grass roots powered. Walmart isn't the answer, Wally and Maria's ice cream stand is.
We are asking for your help. We don't want donations or money, just ideas, constructive criticisms and to support these merchants.
http://easybitz.com Please test drive the system for us. Artur, our CTO (
https://easybitz.com/about ) spent months making sure it can handle anything the internet throws at it so please hammer it!
Together we can take bitcoin to the next level in it's evolution and make it the currency of the vast majority of all business, retail small business! The Lil Guy!
more later!
