What new business models has cryptocurrency hype created?

Cryptocurrency payments between people, companies and robots

Boundary erasure. Leaving aside issues of financial regulation in individual jurisdictions, cross-border settlement is technically possible in seconds from sending to receiving funds. Such speed is not yet available to "oldsters" like Bitcoin or Ethereum. But technologically it is already possible, for example, EOS has an average transaction processing speed of 1.5 seconds.

Micropayments. Services can now charge a hundredth of a cent for their services themselves.

Of course, the average Internet user is not inclined to pay for something he or she is used to getting for free. But there are cases where micropayments are more convenient than the usual subscription model.

For example, charging an advertiser for each individual display of a banner to an end user, charging for calls to a voice recognition service from a mobile translator app, charging a fee for processing data from the weather sensor at your dacha.

On the other hand, having a micro-price for a service is a way to protect against "scams" and spam attacks. Imagine if you would get so many promotional emails if the sender had to pay for each email? Even if the delivery and reading costs were 0.001 cents.

Digital rights

One algorithm and a digital asset can now be owned by many people at once. And ownership is certified and transferred electronically only.

The income generated by a robot (a smart contract) can be automatically distributed to its token holders. And changes to the software code can only be made after electronic approval of the necessary majority.

Another trend is the tokenisation of rights to securities: corporate shares and real-world objects. In essence, tokenisation involves the transfer of rights to securities into a fully electronic form, making their issuance and circulation cheaper, and simplifying the requirements for issuers and holders of rights. All operations are understandably guided by algorithmic robots. This is essentially a new type of trading, which cryptodaily.se wrote about in detail, allowing the user to invest even more conveniently.

The object of digital rights could be entirely digital goods - audio recordings or artefacts in a computer game. And these are huge and growing markets. For example, the entire economy of the online game Entropia Universe was worth $400 million at its peak.

Investment from the community (crowdfunding)

The community and early fans can fund your project and then take an active part in its commercial promotion.

Supporters can include future users as well as outside investors.

You can interest the community to invest in your project by offering them products of the project in return or by promising to share part of the future revenues. When attracting investment in the form of an advance for the future delivery of products, it is customary to offer special discounts on the future price of the product.

Moreover, in the framework of cooperation instead of money, some participants may help with their connections or professional competences - writing articles, translating materials, running groups in social networks. Such a tool for attracting performers is relevant for businesses with minimal start-up capital.

Of course, the hype surrounding ICOs has tarnished the reputation of this tool. But that does not cancel out its convenience and usefulness.

Conclusion

In 2008, Apple launched the Apple Store. A developer from anywhere in the world could place an app on the AppStore and receive a reward on their bank card for each download. At the time, this was a revolutionary opportunity for individual developers and talented teams.

A little later, in 2009, the KickStarter crowdfunding platform appeared, through which projects raised hundreds of millions of dollars to launch their ideas.

Today, the blockchain industry offers equally revolutionary tools for business development. But can blockchain become the same commercial platform for developers of back-end services, machine learning, and the Internet of Things?