As I grow my newest company, an eight-state region of extreme wellness centers, our team is continually addressing the challenge of bringing new or not yet understood modalities for wellness to a clientele that requires education before they can understand the need and value of the services we offer.
This week I spoke with a fellow entrepreneur who carries this same burden, as the provider of a decentralized application (dAPP) platform for bitcoin exchange on the blockchain. The cofounder of NASGO, Eric Tippetts, has a deep background in fundraising for digital assets and the use of token-based cryptocurrencies. But for the majority of entrepreneurs, these technologies are still a mystery that is interesting, but seems out of reach.
To surmount the challenge, NASGO has taken a bold step in making cryptocurrency easier to understand and use: the company announced this week the launch of a blockchain platform “BlockBox,”--an easy-to-use Blockchain Toolbox to help individuals or businesses set themselves up for the creation and exchange of their customized utility token.
When they say “easy,” they mean extremely easy as in becoming the “GoDaddy” of the Blockchain, with the ability to set up or convert traditional web domains into tokenized blockchain entities within minutes for just a few hundred dollars.
The BlockBox toolkit includes three elements, he explains:
- Blockchain Domain Address search and purchase(this is similar to going to GoDaddy for website domains)
- The ability to retrofit your current website for blockchain or to build a new site on blockchain
- The ability to tokenize a company as a way to maximize loyalty and to incentivize customers.
The magnitude of possibilities that comes from easy-to-access blockchain domains is staggering when you consider that individuals and businesses purchased more than 332.4 million traditional web domains in 2017 alone.
NASGO’s hope is to enable as many as possible of those domains and all others with the ability to offer blockchain support, which opens up vast new opportunities in application development and with the support of the toolbox allows them to move Blockchain and cryptocurrency value as easily as we currently move data through our traditional sites.
There is more, of course, to the ability to actually accept cryptocurrency in exchange for your company’s services, such as the need for Point of Sale systems that your employees can use, and that offer instant exchange, to protect you from the risk accepting your normal price and then having the revenue suddenly decrease in value by 20 percent or more by the time it’s exchanged.
And as of yet, although some have done so, it’s not generally possible to pay your employees in token except in cases where they have expressly agreed.
One of the solutions NASGO is working on is the ability to bring an increasing number of entities into a common exchange that makes it seamless and easy to pay for utilities, for ride share and for a variety of commodity goods and services within the platform, eliminating much of the need for exchange. The concept is intriguing and is in active use in regions such as China, Tippetts tells me, but is a long way from pervasive use within the U.S.
However, one of the most promising uses of cybercurrency for entrepreneurs, he says, outside of a vehicle for investment is as a means of creating branded tokens and currency for rewarding fans and followers and as a fluid system for social impact projects within a region and ultimately through the world.
For example, someone could create a branded token for their fan base or customer community that could serve as a new means of measuring and monetizing influence. A musical performer’s tokens, in the hands of their followers, could entitle them to early access to new music, or to VIP seating at events or to exclusive merchandize and swag.
To a service company (like ours?) a token-based reward system could give our most active customers a way to expand their influence as company ambassadors or to gain deeper discounts or bonus services of their own, all without the complexity and requirement for traditional currency to trade hands.
To the extent the NASGO plan is successful, I applaud Tippetts and his company for taking the bold step to make digital currencies easier to access and understand, as fulfilling the role of access and education is a giant step toward the pervasive acceptance of a new technology that Is vital for widespread success.
