January 2015 – RJC ESQ

The long tail of Bitcoin

Much has been said about the slow, nearly flat, adoption rate of Bitcoin in 2014. Unfortunately, many of the writers are to embed in the existing paradigm to understand why Bitcoin is different from previous technologies and why this adoption rate isn’t troubling. The first distinguishing factor is that Bitcoin is a protocol and not a proprietary technology, like say Apple Pay. With a proprietary tech or even a technology promoted by a group of companies, they can artificially inflate or accelerate adoption by virtue of the money they pour into it via marketing or leveraging pre-existing market share. With few exceptions (most notably Bitpay and the Bitcoin Bowl), Bitcoin’s major players do not have the money to market Bitcoin more broadly. That’s why many of them, like Circle, are taking the approach of obscuring the Bitcoin technology behind their sales pitch. They also don’t have the existing market capture of an Apple or Visa.

Some might counter than Bitcoin is more like the Internet, a protocol that doesn’t need to be promoted in its own right because it will grow by virtue of its use by companies and the public not its promotion. While true, there is also a distinct difference. Companies wanting to play in the early days of the Internet were not saddle by oppressive regulations. The early Internet was a wild west and still for the most part remains of the least regulated industries. Companies playing in the Bitcoin space, however, must meet increasing scrutiny of a skeptical regulatory regime in what is one of the more heavily regulated industries, banking and finance.

Some people keep looking for Bitcoin’s killer app. Money is Bitcoin’s (or the blockchain’s) killer app. The transfer of value unburden by the regulatory saddle is what makes Bitcoin useful. Unfortunately, any company wanting to promote, profit from and further Bitcoin reinjects that regulatory burden and removes the principle benefit of the technology. So how is Bitcoin going to grow?

Bitcoin shines by eliminating geographic boundaries. That may be because the sender and recipient are in different locations or because their base money is based on geography (issued by specific countries). As this benefit because apparent to people and businesses who suffer from market capture by intermediaries, they will gravitate to Bitcoin. Then, businesses that provide services to those people will begin taking Bitcoin in greater and greater numbers in order to take advantage of the spending power those users have. Unfortunately, this is not a quick growth curve. It will spread naturally through word of mouth and grass roots efforts. Bitcoin may take years to achieve any measurable market share and it will probably remain a niche market supporting those that most benefit from it.

One of my more frequent comments on Bitcoin is the need for a ecosystem and a reduction on the reliance of BTC<->fiat transactions. Those sorts of transactions are a drag on Bitcoin’s widespread adoption, especially when the transactions are easy one way but hard the other. Unfortunately, companies such as BitPay, in their zeal to drive merchant adoption, have created just this sort of scenario. It’s easy for merchants to accept Bitcoin without actually accepting Bitcoin. The opposite is not true. In other words, it actually fairly difficult to get Bitcoin. Let’s look at people’s options

1) In the golden old days of Bitcoin (just a few short years ago), you could start mining Bitcoin, essentially turning your electric bill into a Bitcoin exchange. The days of hobbyist doing that are long gone. A few enterprising entrepreneurs set up Cloudmining operations to allow the average user to essentially purchase bitcoin through group mining pool, but I dare say with the rush to gold, the mines are running dry at the moment.

2) You could purchase bitcoins through Coinbase, Circle or a few other companies that allow you to directly obtain Bitcoins through your bank account. However, this works only well for those in the U.S. with banks (and possible good credit). Anyway, isn’t the idea to use Bitcoin to get OUT of the traditional banking system?

3) You could steal Bitcoin. Did I mention this blog is not to be construed as legal advice?

4) You could use an exchange such as Mt Gox, Bitstamp, etc. But they are typically not easy to get money into or out of and they have a bit of a reputation problem.

5) You could meet people locally to purchase their bitcoins or sell yours. Just be careful who you interact with.

6) You could use a Bitcoin ATM…. if you can find one….and you can get it to work.

7) or …you could earn Bitcoin. This is one of the reason I accept Bitcoin for legal work (I’ve had one client pay me twice). It is also the reason I launched 1ncemail.com which provides disposable email aliases to protect your privacy, mainly because I wanted a way of earning Bitcoin rather than buying it.

This problem of getting Bitcoin into the hands of people has perplexed me for quite some time. Many people attribute the downward price of Bitcoin to the ease of exit but difficulty of entry. Unless we, as a community, start solving this problem, Bitcoin may not succeed. I’ve been puzzling over this issue for quite some time. Consumer adoption of Bitcoin is one of the reasons I’m co-organizing the Atlanta Bitcoin Consumer Fair in April, 2015. I want to see Bitcoin get widespread adoption.

If you think about it, how do must people obtain money? That’s right, they earn it. I’m encourage that some companies are starting to think about paying employees in #bitcoin. You’ve got Bitpay offering it’s payroll service. Bitwage has an innovative idea to earn your pay per hour, not every 2 weeks. Overstock.com ever on the forefront, is now offering to pay it’s employees in Bitcoin.

I’d like to suggest that while laudable, these efforts are negligible. We need a much bigger target. I would like to suggest that target is the freelance community. I use freelancers all the time. A freelancer built my 1ncemail app. A freelancer wrote my press release for my privacy consulting business. A freelance designed the graphic for the Bitcoin Consumer Fair. Freelances are working on multiple aspects of my Bitcoin related startup, Microdesic. I primarily use elance.com but recently learned the fivver.com takes Bitcoin. Unfortunately, my first experience using their Bitcoin interface was anything but pleasant. However, I will persist.

There are some 53 million freelancers in the United States. Hundreds of millions more worldwide. For reasons that I’ve elucidate elsewhere, such as reduced transaction costs, I feel the future of work is through freelancing. Freelancing seems to be a natural fit for bitcoin

1) Irreputability means once paid, the freelancer doesn’t have to worry about charge backs.

2) Suited for international payments.

3) Low transaction costs.

4) The ability to escrow funds vis-a-vis a multi-sig wallet.

The closest thing I could find was bittask but it doesn’t quite operate like the freelance sites elance.com, freelancer, oDesk, etc. I’m not the first person to think of this. See this article on CryptoCurrency News but I haven’t seen any movement in this space. The comments mention dogerr.com but that’s a centralized service and only for Dogecoins, an altcoin derivative of Bitcoin.