Cryptocurrency marketplaces can take several forms, from a place to buy things with cryptocurrency to a place to start your own store (and then selling things with cryptocurrency) or even a marketplace to lend. Regardless, scouring the Internet can be overwhelming without a clear place to start.
Below is our starting place for the most well-known marketplaces across all categories.
CryptoExchange.com is a marketplace, crypto exchange, and escrow service that specializes in luxury goods and services. The platform allows users to browse through available product categories, including sports cars, timepieces, real estate, and domains. Products can be filtered by price and ordered by various currencies, including bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, and Litecoin. Users have noted that this platform offers 24/7 customer support and escrow services, which are useful when additional support is needed.
Founders brought OpenBazaar to life in 2014 to create a peer-to-peer marketplace for people to freely buy and sell products without corporate tracking. To entice users, the platform offers no fees for its use and now has a growing product variety, including music, videos, short-term rentals, international goods, and local food. The interesting thing to note is that OpenBazaar isn’t a company. It is free, open-source software that distributes data across the network. There are no central parties managing or monitoring transactions.
To make purchases, OpenBazaar supports bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Zcash, and Litecoin, and promises that more currencies will come soon.
For photos, the Bitcoin4Photos platform is a marketplace powered by the Bitcoin Lightning Network. On this network, the website guarantees zero-free transactions and the option for single photo sales. To compare, most photographers have grown to expect up to 85% fees when using a marketplace to sell their art. The advantage is that photographers eliminate some overhead and can earn bitcoin in return.
UJO music is a peer-to-peer (P2P) marketplace for music. What differentiates this platform from iTunes is that no percentage of proceeds goes to the platform. Rather, 100% of all sales go directly to the artist, so music lovers can provide full support to their favorite musicians. UJO Music goes so far as to automatically split each payment with all the song collaborators. Currently, the platform only supports payments made in Ethereum.
Another marketplace of sorts is Bitrefill, a hub to purchase gift cards with cryptocurrency. The platform works with over 1,600 of the most popular businesses in 170 different countries to allow cryptocurrency enthusiasts to indirectly purchase from them. Among the most notable are Amazon and Netflix.
ETHLend is another marketplace, only this time it is for decentralized lending. By removing the power from traditional banks, the platform can support direct peer-to-peer lending. In turn, users can borrow money against cryptocurrency assets such as Ethereum, bitcoin, or DAI.
Origin is both a protocol for creating marketplaces and a dApp that resembles Craigslist. On the dApp, items such as clothing and art or services like online music production and jet skiing lessons are available for purchase in Ethereum or DAI. However, their main focus arose after noting large organizations taking 20-30% commissions for providing a service such as Airbnb and Uber. By cutting out the middleman, service providers would retain a higher profit, further driving the costs of these services down for the consumer.
To make your first transaction, users will need to attach a crypto wallet to their browser, which may require an extension such as Metamask.
Many third-party sites classify Olodolo as a cryptocurrency marketplace. However, it is just a portal that lets you buy any product from AliExpress using your own cryptocurrency. AliExpress is a popular online shopping platform known for having various knock-offs and other cheap products. Although the brand name is also now associated with long wait times due to the distance the products travel. Many also recognize the company from its parent, the Alibaba Group.
To make purchases, shoppers can paste a product number or the AliExpress link and complete payments through a third-party provider. The platform currently accepts payments in bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, and Litecoin.
Shopocratic is an American business aimed to connect consumer and retail buyers with premium products. The platform has various products varying from women’s clothing to bathroom products like diffusers and even kitchen and lighting products. Currently, shoppers can make purchases using bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Cash.
Purchasing with cryptocurrency isn’t much different from other online shopping. With digital currencies, shoppers must have an existing balance of the coin or purchase them from the exchange. Once the user deposits funds, many online marketplaces can be used, with simple processes that resemble the Ecommerce front many consumers already know and love.
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