A central goal among Bitcoin enthusiasts in early days of cryptocurrency was a growing presence of Bitcoin the e-commerce space. Since Laszlo’s famous first Bitcoin trade of 10,000 Bitcoin for Papa John’s pizza, merchant adoption of Bitcoin throughout e-commerce sectors continues to grow,
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Despite the ICO craze of last year, that saw the creation of thousands of new cryptocurrency projects, many focused specifically on coins geared towards e-commerce, Bitcoin remains the e-commerce King. Hundreds of online retailers now accept Bitcoin and have been for several years, including major retailers like Overstock, Newegg, Microsoft, and Expedia, all of whom have been accepting Bitcoin since 2014 or earlier. With the help of Bitcoin-friendly services like Purse.io and Gyft, Bitcoin can now be used to purchase almost anything.
Since 2015, Blockonomics has been a pioneer in streamlining Bitcoin adoption in e-commerce. Alongside their Segwit BlockExplorer, crowned as most popular worldwide, Blockonomics offers a variety of tools to promote Bitcoin transactions between retailers and consumers. Primarily, these include invoicing tools and a number of merchant plugins.
In streamlining adoption, Blockonomics offers even more opportunities. In getting first-time Bitcoiners involved, Blockonomics provides a secure service for sending Bitcoin directly through an email. In onboarding new merchants, Blockonomics offers 30% of accrued fees to users who refer merchants to use their platform. Blockonomics takes 1% fees on each sale, so referrals earn 0.3% of every transaction made by their merchant.
Blockonomics Prepares for ICO
To further their mission in supporting Bitcoin as the #1 currency for e-commerce, Blockonomics will undergo an ICO. With funding from the ICO, Blockonomics will be able to expand their services provided to encapsulate a range of benefits and services to merchants utilizing the platform.
According to the road map, these services will first consist of integration with a number of e-commerce solutions: Shopify, Wix, OpenCart, and more. These integrations are slated for September of this year.
In maintaining their role as a pioneer of Bitcoin e-commerce, Blockonomics is also looking to integrate Lightning Network functionalities to merchants on its platform. Lightning Network enables fee-less, instantaneous microtransactions. Beyond this, Blockonomics also seeks to enable zero confirmation payment, where the Blockonomics API can detect double-spend attempts without the need for miner confirmation. This will enable similarly instantaneous transactions on large payments that do not take place on Lightning Network.
This ICO will kick off with a July 1 pre-sale that will run until the end of July. It will be followed immediately by a main sale from August 1 to August 15. Pre-sale participants will enjoy a 20% discount over main sale pricings. Between both public sales and a small private sale, Blockonomics is looking to raise a maximum of roughly US$10 million through sale of 60% of their 1 billion BCK token supply.
The BCK token will provide several key functionalities. First and foremost, merchants who accept BCK will enjoy zero fee payment processing from Blocknomics. Users of BCK will earn rewards and bonuses simply for using the token. Lastly, BCK users can earn discounts on purchases made through Blockonomics and at partner stores.
Read more about the Blockonomics ICO via their whitepaper. Stay up-to-date by joining their Telegram channel and following them on Twitter.
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