The intention of this post is not to bash Altcoins. There are a lot of exciting projects out there, with vibrant communities, tirelessly working on advancing Blockchain projects and the fascinating world of cryptocurrencies. But let's face the truth: Nobody is using Altcoins. And by Altcoins, we mean projects that use a tradeable token to incentivise the sturdiness and resilience of its blockchain - because without a token, a blockchain don't make a whole lot of sense. So we're talking about pretty much all projects that are listed on CoinCap.
Wow! We are accepting more than 40 Altcoins!
We were pretty excited when we announced Bitwala's partnership with Shapeshift a couple weeks ago. All of the sudden, we could accept more than 40 Altcoins! We have written posts on some, like Ethereum, Dash, Monero or LBRY. Some of those were never intended to be used as means of payment while others explicitly try to improve or even replace Bitcoin.
But nobody is using them.
So here's our experience with Altcoins: Nobody is using them! We had heard this rumor before, from other Altcoin accepting sites, like BitcoinCommodities. It takes some work to implement the option to accept them, and more work to market them. We weren't exactly sure if it would be feasible to do so. We decided to go ahead anyways. We got some decent coverage and encouraging responses, especially for our announcements regarding Steem, Monero and Dash. The announcement that we'd be accepting Dash got us at least an additional 1000 unique users, which is pretty good for our current average traffic. The announcement about our support of Steem even made us 500 USD in Steem (which will be given away to charity, as promised). The post about Monero resulted in the most engaging tweet in August.
Bitwala is now accepting Monero! Pay bills, bank accounts or top up your Debit Card using #XMR. https://t.co/PUZFeIVPAo @monerocurrency
— Bitwala (@bitwala) August 29, 2016
Just to give a few examples. So, our efforts to put the message out didn't go unnoticed. We got clicks, we got coverage, but one thing we didn't get: Volume.
Here come the numbers:
You're wondering how much turnover we had with Altcoins in the past two months? A little more than 3 Bitcoin in total. Roughly 2000 USD, if you generously round up. In the same time, we had a total turnover of approximately 2 million USD with Bitcoin. That's 0.1 percent turnover in Altcoins. We charge a flat fee of 0.5% per transaction. Do the math. You'll probably get the point.
So we'll focus on Bitcoin again. We will still accept Altcoins, and we will make announcements once in a while (hint: Steem Dollars). But for now, our takeaway is clear:
So what's your take on this? Do you have similar experiences? Or was our approach to Altcoins completely wrong? Let us know in the comment section, shoot us an email or follow us on Steemit or some of the dinosaur social media like Twitter or Facebook.