Corporate cryptocurrencies
In my recent interview with Jonathan Stark, we talked about how cryptocurrency is like the "in-game currency" of the internet. Andrew Levine replied on twitter extending the analogy to NFTs as "in-game items".
If you've played video games (especially RPGs) these descriptions should be clear and have you thinking about all the different currencies/items in games you've played. How can you apply your best gaming experiences to cryptocurrency/NFTs?
However, if you represent a large company, video game analogies will only take you so far. You probably need something more immediately applicable to your business if you want to get any traction proposing blockchain as a solution to your boss. For this, I would describe cryptocurrency as "in-store credit" or "gift cards" and NFTs as a way to track memberships/rewards/perks.
Customer loyalty is a big topic for enterprise. If you can incentivize customers so they want to keep coming back, that helps tremendously with revenue without needing more marketing budget.
But if you are a large company, why bother with the blockchain? Centralized solutions got you to where you are, so why change? Three reasons come to mind:
- Marketing. Launching a consumer-facing app on blockchain as a large company is bound to get your name in the press.
- Cryptocurrencies and NFTs are portable for consumers. As blockchain continues to grow in adoption, this is going to be a quality that many consumers will value. I may not want to have $1000 locked up on a Starbucks gift card, but I'd trust owning 1000 $SBUX coins in my wallet.
- Large companies constantly look for ways to do things in-house instead of paying someone else for their service/platform. It's (theoretically) cheaper in the long run and reduces dependence on vendors. A dependency on blockchain isn't the same thing as dependency on a business partner. Blockchains are "trustless" but you could also say "riskless." I'm oversimplifying, but hopefully that makes sense.
I know there are lots of other reasons to consider building on blockchain. These are just a few angles that should appeal to fortune 500 clients.
More tomorrow,
-Luke
P.S. There's plenty of reasons not to build your loyalty program on blockchain as well. I'll address a few of those tomorrow.