It looks like Bitcoin is going to take over the world after all. The capitalization is ceaseless, and every time it grows a couple of Ks, the fan base is only getting bigger. Not blind to the fact, entrepreneurs are looking at more advanced ways to make profit aside from simply buying and selling bitcoin. However, cryptocurrency trading too is also a great idea for a startup that can be taken to a very sophisticated extent as we’ve discussed in our previous piece on how to build a cryptocurrency exchange platform.
In case you aren’t exactly aiming straight at launching your very own ICO, there is plenty of room for businesses to sprawl around the circulating and ever so lucrative crypto-tokens that make for a motherlode of opportunity.
1. Cryptocurrency Exchange
The first most obvious and straightforward option is setting up a trading website. Bitcoin exchange for fiat currencies and other coins is the most popular way for the people involved to make profit. In this respect, you should be aware of the difference between the definitions of cryptocurrency exchanger and the exchange.
Exchanger is a relatively basic trading website that has a manually regulated price table. It simply profits from the difference between the buy and sell prices that is mostly fixed.
Cryptocurrency exchange platform, on the other hand, is a full-fledged marketplace. This kind of trading hub is more similar to the stock exchange with live order book and fluctuating prices. The prices change depending on the trading volume and users profit from these changes. As the owner, you get a certain percent from all transactions.
One of the notable features that the developers should be aware to include when building a cryptocurrency platform is that a new trading outpost is susceptible to abuse by speculators.
For this reason, well-established exchanges have a special design to use a trading network that allows them to buy/sell among themselves to balance the price fluctuations. This way speculators won’t be able to push the price windows at your exchange out of balance and obtain all the funds for cheap.
2. Gaming
The latest trends in online multiplayer games have led to create a highly viable gameplay experience major part of which are the random rewards of highly rare in-game items. An important in-game mechanic is allowing these items to be openly exchanged among the players. As random rewards are the way these games are intended to be played, creators don’t promote the direct sale of the designated items and only sell boosters to increase the chance of obtaining them without selling any specific items directly.
Trading concrete items is left open to third-party “black market” where trading companies work to earn positive reputation and trust of the player community.
While some players are willing to buy the rare items and the others feel that the best way is to sell their loot for actual profit, you may create a third party online platform to trade these items. One of the most notable cases with this phenomenon is nation-wide online-game gold farming in Venezuela.
Cryptocurrencies being so popular with the masses due to bitcoin growth, selling rare in-game items for blockchain tokens is now on the rise.
3. Gambling
Cryptocurrencies are not constrained by legal regulations much like the normal money. You may create crypto-casino that is ahead of all the competition bound by the law. This includes poker, sports betting and online gaming item gambling.
4. Cryptocurrency ATMs
For those with a fairly huge capital, there is an option to create a network of Bitcoin ATMs or BTMs.
These machines help their users operate cryptocurrency with relative ease and promise to return the investment within a year should you get hold of good locations. The boxes are quite small, and so the rent won’t go through the roof.
The main expense points are the machines themselves, and the fact that you will have to supply them with banknotes. The transaction fee can reach 10% and sometimes even go beyond.
The choice of machines is quite huge, and they let you set the commissions as high or low as you’d like. Additionally, there are models that allow connecting to middle-men cryptocurrency exchanges. With this feature, you’ll be able to keep your crypto-reserves at a constant supply.
Just make sure that when you set up your BTM chain, the machines are adjusted in accordance with your local legal regulations.
5. Selling Goods for Cryptocurrencies
If you already own a retail business, you can augment it so that people are able to pay you in crypto. As traditional paper money is steadily rendered obsolete, the digital payment methods step in and a certain medium of users would be willing to pay you with bitcoin.
In locations where bitcoin is popular and people don’t feel like converting their earnings, you may thrive by setting up shops with digital POS cash registers or vending machines that accept cryptocurrencies.
6. Becoming an Escrow Agent
Should you happen to be involved into a reputable brand, the brand value can be used to build a trust agent. In our case – for transactions. The model is quite simple, when crypto-transaction is transmitted and accepted, it would require 2 confirmations: 1 from the sender and 1 from the receiver. Should a dispute occur, and one party refuses to seal the deal, you get involved and choose to side with one or the other depending on validity of their arguments and make the final call afterward.
If people get the idea that your brand is taking a hit in case of ill judgment, they’ll be willing to pay out of their nose only to make their operation more secure.
7. Becoming an Oracle
Based on the strength of your reputation, you can establish yourself as a cryptocurrency Oracle. This is done simply by posting quite basic info in the bitcoin blockchain stream or that of any other token. All you need is Counterparty protocol. In fact, counterparty is basically a synonym to the oracle, a person who whose information feed is used (in our case for a reward). The same way escrow arbiter can approve disputes, oracles’ information is used as a reference for peer-to-peer betting, financial forecasting and smart contracts.
8. Setting Up a Ripple Gateway
Ripple is a cryptocurrency the main idea of which is to create a highly accessible payment instrument. It does not operate on a blockchain and uses a distributed ledger that is somewhat different.
As part of the core concept, Ripple allows you to set up Gateways. Ripple Gateways are enabling their users to transfer funds. You are able to create your own custom tokens within the system or use Ripple itself. The condition is that you can bridge your token to a real asset to support its value.
This may include the value of your reputation but you should be able communicate it properly. Ripple gateway is a great way to expand your finance business into the world of cryptocurrency.
The income sources here are fees for transactions, deposit/withdrawal and interest for bank stored XRP Ledger.
9. Consultancy
There are many business opportunities that are stored within cryptocurrencies and the blockchain technology itself that companies could easily benefit from. However, many stay oblivious to it, and so you may help those willing to find out for a fee.
These are the opportunities to expand their business into profitable notary work, smart contracts among the more sophisticated kinds and many more.
When embarking on this road, make sure you don’t exaggerate your expertise level. Even as a person without a huge rap sheet you can approach companies offering consultation on how to incorporate profitable blockchain based extensions into their business.
10. Creating a Bitcoin Faucet
If you are running a news portal or blog about cryptocurrencies, you may create a bitcoin or altcoin faucet. The main idea behind a faucet is giving users small fractions of cryptocurrency to obtain certain kind of value.
Why give away free money? To drive traffic. On its own, this niche is extremely competitive, so it is recommended to propose this service in addition to other kinds of value.
You can cash in on the incoming traffic in a number of ways. Aside from the Google Adsense ads you may use niche specific Bitcoin Ad Networks but they offer you less money.
Another thing you can do is advertising other faucets but you’ll have to make sure that those faucets aren’t very popular. Otherwise, your visitors will simply ignore the ads because the places aren’t new to them.
Up-in-your-face kind of ads are another gamble you might want to test. If you offer enough value, the visitors won’t bounce despite of being annoyed, then you will get a good of extra income.
Blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies are ripe with opportunity, and we are yet to see some of the most spectacular cases for innovation with new ICOs on the way.
If you are you are into cryptocurrency business, it’s a great time to reap something awesome from this massively popular technological breakthrough.
