Maybe Bitcoin instead of going full mainstream currency needs to enter the masses through loyalty bonus point type programs. Loyalty points were really the original virtual currency....it's a lot less intimidating to the average user to collect 'points' or tokens and redeem them alongside normal fiat pathways.
Say Starbucks gave out digital crypto points with a purchase made through your cellphone or credit card. Starbucks can firstly have tailor made loyalty program that normally is wasteful and inefficient and customers have then used cryto in a way that means they almost don't need to know its Bitcoin.
There are alt coin projects like Coval moving into this area but maybe Bitcoin needs to enter the masses counciousness through the backdoor of loyalty programs? The loyalty industry is btw worth 70 billion annually so it's not a small thing.
Thanks Dannyman for pushing this debate. That's indeed a hot topic. Currently, many people are very excited by the crypto hype, and therefore bitcoin in a first place, but very few are actually using it in the real life.
I'm re-opening this debate because we just started
LoyaltyCoin, which is a blockchain solution for loyalty programs.
The biggest concern about loyalty programs is that, by essence, it has nothing to do with decentralization, since we are talking about a corporation that distribute points. Decentralization can bring something when we start thinking about exchanging point from one brand to another. In this case, a blockchain can do the work.
interesting idea but not likely.
why would companies give out bitcoin as a reward system instead just accepting bitcoin in the first place? also by redeeming the reward bitcoins they would be accepting bitcoin, since they can not check where i got my coin from (technical possible but why would they want to do that?).
the rewards the would give out were just some satoshi almost faucetlike. and bitcoin is already seen as money, which is what you want to avoid in these reward programs. do they not invent these reward points to disguise the real money value?
The point is correct but you are missing an important point about loyalty programs. A retailer is happy to payback a part of his revenue to know its customers. The retailer wants to have an email address, a postal address... or would like to be on the smartphone of its clients. Bitcoin has to be seen as cash, and it would not make sense for a retailer to give some cash back to the customer, unless the merchant has a website, where the customer has an account, on which micro bitcoin transactions would be recorded. In addition to that, using bitcoin as a primary solution would be difficult to sell to retailers.
That could be the case in the future with a bitcoin sidechain, what would be awesome.
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