Tag Archives: marketplace
BitDazzle Launches “Etsy for Bitcoin” Small Business Marketplace
BitDazzle is the latest Bitcoin marketplace to come online, targeting small business owners
Already with 1,000 merchants on board, BitDazzle using Bitcoin as a draw to compete with other online marketplaces like Etsy and eBay. When users pay with credit cards, transaction fees can be 3% to 5% of the sale. But with Bitcoin, fees are low or non-existent, and there are no risks of chargebacks.
BitDazzle plans to take a flat 1% on Bitcoin purchases, but also supports PayPal and credit cards.
BitDazzle was created by venture-backed startup Cashie Commerce and has partnered with Coinbase as its Bitcoin payment processor, using the Coinbase API. Cashie Commerce CEO Hieu Bui said he expects Coinbase to promote the new marketplace to its 300,000 users. Coinbase expressed their excitement in a blog post.
Overall, BitDazzle hopes to grow the Bitcoin transaction economy and raise further awareness for the currency. “We’re trying to make Bitcoin more mainstream, and one of the ways to do that is to have more products and merchants who are mainstream,” Bui said in an interview with Xconomy.
Related: Startup Profile: Coingig Launches the eBay Marketplace for Bitcoin
Coin Forest Wants to the Be the Groupon for Bitcoin
Group Deals with Bitcoin on Coin Forest
It seems like every week there are new companies springing up that are taking proven business models and applying Bitcoin. Bitcoin has several advantages to these businesses: instant transactions, very low fees, and fully digital.
We sat down with the co-founder John Mardlin and Business Development Manager Brandon Gains of Coin Forest, a group-buying site that specializes in deals for Bitcoin, to learn more about their new business.
On Bitcoin: What is Coin Forest and how did you get started?
Brandon Gains: Coin Forest is a Bitcoin-only business that offers special group-buying discounts to the bitcoin community. Coin Forest is a boot-strapped startup out of Victoria, British Columbia.
John Mardlin: Coin Forest is like Groupon for Bitcoiners. Though the main difference is that we care about our community, and our primary motive isn’t profit.
I got started just by finding out about Bitcoin from an acquaintance while I was visiting San Francisco. It wasn’t the best timing really, I put about $1k into BTC at $140 in early April. We know what happened after that.
I got to thinking about how little the price of Bitcoin is really tied to it’s utility as a means of exchanging real goods and services. I also got to thinking about how effective of a differentiator the currency could be.
At the same time, I was working at PMRobot.com, a project management tool in a really crowded market. The whole SaaS space is so crowded, I thought there might be some opportunity for a group buying site focusing on B2B SaaS.
At some point, all those disjoint thoughts just kind of coalesced into the idea that looks a lot like what Coin Forest is right now.
On Bitcoin: Why the focus on Bitcoin?
John Mardlin: Bitcoin is the whole point! My dream was never to run a daily deals website, but I am very motivated to help expand the reach of the bitcoin economy, and I think this is the perfect model to do it. I wrote about why that is here: http://blog.coinforest.
This quote is the first time someone has really effectively put my vision into their own words: http://www.reddit.com/
Brandon Gains: We want to grow the bitcoin economy. Many people have heard about bitcoin but don’t see a reason to buy it unless they are investing. By providing short-term discounts we can create a temporary situation where the only way to get a certain item at a certain price is with bitcoin. We want to be the reason many people get their first bitcoin.
On Bitcoin: Who do you think should use your site?
Brandon Gains: We think our site’s deals will be targeted towards anyone interested in buying: bitcoin related goods/services, 3D printing services, equipment for makers, online education, tools and services for building software, and services for startups/online businesses.
John Mardlin: We want to provide products that will appeal to any bitcoiners, not all of the time, but at least some of the time. As we progress, we’ll discover what people are the most interested in.
Aside from helping people get deals though, we really want to be the place that people go when they want to use bitcoin to buy a particular companies products. My dream is that we can get enough people together, pledging to purchase a major companies product if they begin to accept bitcoin. This would likely be someone like github, or 23andMe, shapeways, autodesk, atlassian, adafruit…. any tech savvy company that’s shown itself to be a leading innovator.
On Bitcoin: How fast can you scale, considering there are only 11 million Bitcoin in distribution? Whats your long-term view?
John Mardlin: You might look at it like that… or you might see it as one of very few companies providing a service to an economy worth 1 billion dollars. We don’t expect to bump up against the limits of the bitcoin economy, we expect to grow by helping it grow.
Brandon Gains: We feel that bitcoin has started a global movement towards a decentralized economy and we believe that cryptocurrencies are the future of global currency; even if bitcoin falters in a few years there are several promising alt-currencies there to take it’s place. We feel that we can scale up the company quickly once we prove the success of our first deals. We will be able to attract bigger and bigger companies to start accepting bitcoin-only deals.
Startup Profile: Coingig Launches the eBay Marketplace for Bitcoin
Coingig is part eBay, part Amazon, all Bitcoin
As adoption of Bitcoin rapidly increases, the alternative currency is gaining ground as a payment method for online marketplaces, but primarily only accepted for digital goods. Coingig is a relatively new marketplace that is taking the revolutionary step of only accepting Bitcoin for physical goods.
Coingig is part eBay, part Amazon, all Bitcoin. Individual sellers or small businesses can list physical items for sale, from clothing to electronics and beyond. Sellers price their goods in USD and Coingig automatically updates the price in Bitcoin every 10 seconds. Coingig charges a flat 2.5% fee to sellers, and holds payment in escrow to ensure transactions are successful.
We connected with Kenneth Metral, CEO of Coingig to interview him about his company.
On Bitcoin: When did you create Coingig and what services does it offer?
Kenneth Metral: Coingig.com was launched 2 months ago with the intention of providing an easy and fast platform to allow users to buy and sell products using the new virtual currency bitcoin. Since the day that we opened we have already brought in 1000 products from sellers across the world that are looking to create a bitcoin business fast and easy. Many people compare us to the eBay and Amazon of Bitcoin but with the difference that our fees are pennies compared to what they charge and we allow users to buy and sell products from any part in the world, which is not possible with eBay nor Amazon.
On Bitcoin: What products sell best on your marketplace?
Kenneth Metral: The products in our inventory range from toys to electronics to even outdoor gear. Currently our best selling products are bitcoin t-shirts, stickers, electronics and paintball gear and even toy magnets. Everyday we receive tons of new products added to our inventory so orders come in for practically anything.
On Bitcoin: How has the volatility of Bitcoin impacted your sales?
Kenneth Metral: The volatility of bitcoin was a factor that was thought of when we built our system, when a seller lists a product they set the price they want to sell their item for to the current price of the local currency they choose when they sign up, our system will then automatically update their bitcoin price every 10 secs to the current exchange rate price for that currency. For example, if someone is selling a shirt for $10 USD, they set the price at $10 and it will show the equivalent bitcoin price right next to it, once the seller saves the item it will lock in that price and automatically load its BTC price on the fly without ever touching the price again.
On Bitcoin: What can you tell us about the future for Coingig?
Kenneth Metral: Coingig is still in it’s beta stage but we are growing very fast, with new buyers and sellers joining everyday our marketplace will soon grow to 5,000-10,000 items and housing all the possible products to be able to provide a one stop shop to purchasing goods and services with bitcoin. Our system was built from scratch so we can add any features that our users suggest and by being hosting with Rackspace we provide the fastest possible service to our users with zero downtime. We believe that by providing the best technology, design, and customer service we can become the new Amazon of this generation.
Learn more at Coingig.com
Top Bitcoin News Last Week: Liberty Reserve, Seattle Mayor, Mt. Gox, and More
Bitcoin News
A roundup of the top Bitcoin news from May 27 to June 1:
Monday, May 27
Wednesday, May 29
Thursday, May 30
Friday, May 31
Saturday, June 1
Bitcoin Now Accepted at VectorToons Art Marketplace via BitPay
VectorToons will use BitPay to Accept Bitcoin
VectorToons.com, a royalty-free PDF vector illustrations website, announced that the website will now accept Bitcoin as a payment method.
“Our company was among the first to accept Paypal when they were a startup,” said owner and founder of Yourbrain Media Inc. Brad Gosse. “Bitcoin is a secure, legitimate currency being used in high volumes online. Since many of our customers are early adopters, we need to be as well.”
The website will use BitPay, an electronic payment processing system for the Bitcoin currency, to calculate the current U.S. dollar to Bitcoin exchange rate. It will then give the customer a payment address upon checkout.
“If you already have a Bitcoin wallet, it’s extremely easy,” said Gosse. In addition to Bitcoin, the website also accepts Paypal and credit cards.
The VectorToons.com website allows people to buy only the graphics that they want without a subscription or the purchasing of credits. The clip art, available as a high-quality PDF download, is royalty-free and can be used in an array of projects, from websites and videos, to sales letters and in print advertising. The PDF format allows easy conversion to other popular formats like PNG, JPEG and GIF.
“I created the site mainly because I find it hard to find good vector art at reasonable prices,” said Gosse. “I have had my own full -time cartoonists on staff for a long time and decided to open my exclusive catalog to other designers. A dollar for vector art is unheard of in the design world, so I figured let’s make it affordable for everyone.”
Currently, the site has over 1000 images to choose from, but Gosse says more will be added daily. The site features artwork of people, animals, icons, food items, holiday-related graphics and other objects. The website allows you to browse by category or search by keywords.
Using vector graphics in your sales letters, products, books and advertising helps to improve your message and can increase sales says Gosse.
“Since hiring my own cartoonists over a year ago, my sales copy conversions have more than doubled,” said Gosse.
