Two milestones were achieved in the past month: the total amount raised by ICOs in 2017 crossed $1 billion, putting us on a $2-billion pace for the year, and the total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies crossed and settled over $100 billion.
Despite such staggering numbers and the increase in mainstream media attention, we’re still operating in a niche market. While it’s difficult to draw the line and say exactly when the market truly reaches a growth stage, there are two items that seem paramount: consumer protection, and utility for mainstream corporations.
That last one is one that we’re tackling with benjaCoin. We’ve secured commitments from our vendors: they’re on board with a token-based ad network. We’re getting the big boys into cryptocurrency.
The Benja merchandise network launched three years ago with a mission to change the deals space: we brought personalization, an impression-based business model (vs. the standard margin-crushing commission or fee models), and unique user-experiences to the market.
So far, so good: we’ve attracted top-tier vendors and brands including Patagonia, the NFL Shop, and Under Armour, great investors including the VegasTechFund, and we’ve saved our users a lot of money.
Earlier this year, we decided to launch a cryptotoken to address major issues around pricing transparency and billing cycle lag times. That’s benjaCoin, which is available today at Orderbook.io, but that’s not the point of this post. This is about the questions that our partners had and how we’re addressing them.
The Challenge is simple: these companies are scared of cryptocurrency.
And if you’re wondering why, here’s where Ethereum has been in the last three months:
- 5/17: $88.36
- 5/24: $194.16
- 5/27: $146.80
- 6/13: $395.46
- 6/27: $243.58
- 7/16: $141.47
- 8/7: $266.59
Many of these corporations are publicly-held and would never willingly hold a piece of real estate or inventory with this kind of volatility. Many of these organizations have entire teams dedicated to minimizing or avoiding these kinds of risks.
But of course, we were not asking them to transact their ad business in Ethereum or Bitcoin — we were asking them to transact in benjaCoin, which will take place over a Benja-owned, semi-closed network that we have some control over. This shifted the conversation and turned it into a sales job.
There were three major keys to this sale:
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We had to simplify the language and make it easy to talk about among themselves. We understood that there are some individuals who will never understand blockchain, and pitched accordingly. Cryptocurrency is intimidating. Cryptotoken is a little better, but once we started saying “token” and “benjaCoin,” people were a lot less tense. There’s just something about that crypto prefix.We also leaned on an analogy: buying a benjaCoin token is buying a ticket for the ride. Rather than exchanging USD for 1,000 impressions, we explained, you’re exchanging a benjaCoin token. Simple as that.
- Once framed properly, it was still important to explain why we are adding a step to their ad-purchasing process. In exchange for their cooperation, we explained, they would receive things they’ve been asking us (and all other ad networks) for: true transparency in pricing, and a same-day billing cycle. These are huge wins for them — and therefore, an extra step to their process is something they’re thrilled to do.
- We pledged to make the user experience simple, much like the folks at BuySellAds.com do. If we can make our experience as direct as their marketplace listings are, include the transparency that comes with use of benjaCoin, and (this is the big one) offer the purchase of benjaCoin as simply as they do their fiat checkout, we will win. And we will win big. We’ve promised to do this, and included it in the Development Roadmap portion of our white paper.
Our vendors only represent a small group of a specific segment, but we’re thrilled to bring these household names into cryptocurrency. We believe their willingness is reason to be optimistic about the future of our space, and hope others will find the same kind of success.
With this hurdle cleared, it’s full-steam ahead with our pre-sale event and plan to convert the entire Benja network in 2018.
See you there.
My name is Andrew J. Chapin — I’m a co-founder of Benja, the merchandise ad network, which recently announced the benjaCoin.