Purse has become one of the more exciting companies in the Bitcoin space due to their dedication to creating use cases for mainstream users. While many other Bitcoin-related businesses are focused on trading or wallet software, Purse has created a reason for people who don’t care about Bitcoin to go out of their way to use the peer-to-peer digital cash system. The large discounts on Amazon purchases provided by Purse have opened the eyes of the general public when it comes to why they may want to use Bitcoin, and the company will soon be expanding their platform to allow anyone to sell goods for bitcoin on a new marketplace.
A Balance Between eBay and OpenBazaar
Purse Co-Founder and CEO Andrew Lee recently provided CoinJournal with a few extra details on the upcoming marketplace, and the company’s vision for this new ecommerce platform seems clear. Lee was able to sum up the main point of the new ecommerce solution with the following statement:
“We use Bitcoin to enable anyone to shop, earn bitcoins, or sell items without approval from banks or payment processors.”
The Purse marketplace will allow anyone to sell their goods online without the need for a merchant account from a payment processor because Bitcoin (and other altcoins via ShapeShift) will be used for payments. Unlike the other marketplace options coming out of the Bitcoin space, such as OpenBazaar and BitMarkets, Lee noted that Purse is focusing on “ease-of-use and customer satisfaction instead of total anonymity.”
Purse will also be taking advantage of the blockchain and multisignature addresses to act as an escrow agent for all transactions on their new platform. As Lee noted, this is an area where the company already has more experience than anyone else in the world:
“Purse is not only the largest consumer marketplace in the world for Bitcoin but also the most experienced blockchain escrow agent. We’re leveraging our reputation system, network, and payments mechanism to expand the platform.”
Overcoming eBay’s Network Effect
One of the main issues when competing with eBay is that the online auction giant enjoys a ridiculous network effect from its time in the early days of e-commerce. Having said that, Purse may have a unique opportunity to drive new users to their platform in a short period of time. In addition to the goods and products sold by users on the platform, Purse will also display Amazon products with the discounts that their users have come to appreciate over the past year. The shopping experience has been simplified to look as if the user is shopping on a normal retail website, and Purse has released a video to illustrate just how easy it will be to shop on this new platform:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aYUEm0UpOg
A Real Bitcoin Use Case for Mainstream Users
When combined with Coinbase, Circle, or fiat-pegged cryptocurrencies, it’s possible that this new marketplace could be a huge step forward for the adoption of Bitcoin by the general public. Users are able to hold US dollars on Coinbase (in some states) and Circle, which means that they don’t even need to know that they’re using Bitcoin to get the discounted Amazon goods or products posted for sale by other users. Instead of telling their friends and family members about Bitcoin, it could make sense for bitcoin enthusiasts to talk about the apps built on top of the platform such as Coinbase, Circle, and Purse. At the end of the day, Average Joe cares about useful apps more than a base protocol.
Andrew Lee is currently doing an AMA on Roger Ver’s Bitcoin.com.
For more information on Purse, read our review