I remember my grandmother telling me a story that many years ago she bought her mother a microwave. “You just have to put the chicken in there for half an hour and it should be done”.  What my great grandmother failed to appreciate is that the chicken should be raw, and not have been roasted for 3 hours already! I hate to think what Gordon Ramsay would have said.

Yes, being an “early adopter” of new technology can be challenging sometimes, but it is often extremely financially rewarding.

In this article I will outline why I believe that businesses who choose to become the early adopters of crypto commerce (cryptocurrency + ecommerce) stand to greatly benefit their bottom lines, and why the upcoming Safex marketplace is a new paradigm in online selling.

The growth of Ecommerce and the adoption of Cryptocurrency

As discussed in a previous article, ecommerce is expected to rapidly grow in the coming years. A few key statistics include:

While e-commerce is boasting some impressive future growth numbers, the expected rise of cryptocurrency is equally remarkable:

Cryptocurrency: The future of paying goods and services online

Cryptocurrency and e-commerce are individually growing at an astounding rate, but the future of these sectors is intimately intertwined. In a recent survey, 36% of payments industry professionals think blockchain (the technology which enables cryptocurrency and secure digital contracts) will impact the European payments industry by 2025[19], with some commentators speculating that it will “impact our world more than the internet has”[20].

It is predicted that cryptocurrencies are the future of paying for goods and services online[21], and in fact, that future is rapidly approaching.

“WeMakePrice”, one of the largest e-commerce platforms in South Korea, recently began accepting 12 cryptocurrencies as a form of payment[22]. Already in 2018 44% of gamers have reported that they purchased or traded games on the blockchain[23].

A cosmetics company in Canada has even reported that customers spend more per purchase when they use cryptocurrency[24].

The idea of paying for goods and services using cryptocurrency is starting to enter the public awareness. In Germany, 11.4% of people say that they would use cryptocurrency for payments[25],  while almost 40% of Americans who were familiar with cryptocurrency said that they were willing to use Bitcoin for transactions and making purchases[26].

In Europe, around 9% of people own some cryptocurrency (interestingly, that number is 18% in Turkey)[27], while 35% of Europeans (53% of Turks) said that cryptocurrency is the future of spending online[28].

As for retailers who are considering accepting cryptocurrency as a means of payment, 3% of North American retailers plan to accept cryptocurrency within 12 months, and 12% plan to between 1 and 3 years from now[29].

Cryptocurrency needs a real-world use case to gain mass adoption and e-commerce is a natural fit for this purpose. The rapid growth of cryptocurrencies and the e-commerce industry puts the two on a path of intersection, on a path to crypto commerce.

By the year 2025, cryptocurrencies are expected to be widely adopted[30], with 50% of respondents in one survey expecting to pay their bus fare using cryptocurrencies by that date[31].

Those businesses who adopt this new method of payment will likely be the ones who benefit the most from it in the long term. A quote from a recent Forbes article sums up the situation perfectly: “we’re still early in the days of crypto commerce.  For early-adopters it’s a great time to start trading in crypto, before their competitors do.”[32].