Watch Out eBay. Crypto Is Coming For You.

Once upon a time eBay was a great friend to anybody looking to make either a part time or full time income online. I remember those times. Back in high school I made money by flipping trading cards and video games on eBay that I bought on another site for a profit. Unfortunately, that time is gone.

Ebay has gotten too big and too greedy. Most online sellers now have horror stories about eBay or Paypal destroying their accounts and businesses or outright freezing their Paypal accounts, because eBay now controls that too. Why don't they just leave then? It's because there are no other options and Ebay knows that. What online eCommerce needs is a big dose of decentralization, and the crypto community is moving into position to deliver it.

So, why am I talking about eBay in a crypto article? It's because this creates an interesting opportunity for crypto currency to step into the eccommerce space that I've been waiting for somebody to fill. These thousands of sellers who have been burned by big business and the financial sector finally have a choice. In the block chain.

Bitboost is building a decentralized peer to peer exchange network called The Block. People will be able to trade freely with each other by use of the ethereum block chain. Their system will provide a marketplace with both a reputation system and arbitrators who can oversee transactions. However, it will be much more fair to sellers while still protecting buyers.

Since you control your own wallet address there's no need to worry about your funds being frozen due to a fraudulent dispute. The fees are also capped with no percentage of your selling price taken. Compare this to the ever rising fees of big players like eBay who have garnered themselves the nickname of FeePay by sellers suffering from constantly shrinking profit margins.

The next big one for me is privacy. While other eCommerce giants may harvest your personal data for their own usage or to sell to third parties The Block values privacy. None of your personal information will be required for you to join, and you'll even be able to shield your ethereum wallet address with an alias so no one can tie the wallet contents to you.

They also have plans to support Tor protocols. While some people think that only shady people need to use things like VPNs and Tor that's not true. These are simply tools used to protect your privacy and your information. This keeps you and your wallets safe.

Lastly, the platform can not be censored. The Bit Boost team does not have the ability to remove content and nobody else will either. This gives a lot of freedom, but obviously many people will not like everything that may be for sale on a site with such freedom. The platform also has the option of filtering certain items which will be enabled by default. If a user finds certain content offensive they can simply hide it which is a fair solution. Interestingly, they also have a feature called "third party filters" which will allow you to submit your own content filters to better suit your group. These can be shared with other users should they find them useful!

This could be popular for people who are browsing from work and need to keep themselves out of trouble with a Safe For Work filter or even one just based on the kind of stuff you like seeing to filter out items you're not interested in. Maybe if you're a vegan you could filter out all items made from animal products only showing synthetics that are acceptable for your lifestyle? Maybe you have a specific diet, and you need to filter out products you're allergic to? Having some preset filters could certainly make your shopping much easier!

Why is The Block different though? Plenty of other platforms have tried the same thing. I've even tried several of them. All of them had good and bad things, but the biggest thing none of them have is the power to go mainstream. BitBoost has a sizable development team, and the ICO will provide real funding which I hope will give them what they need to deliver a solid product and have great PR to push them into the limelight.

Their upcoming development of mobile apps will no doubt help immensely with getting people to try out the platform. Especially if they are polished and easy for people to use. Cracking eCommerce is a big job, and I hope they can make a dent, because I'd sure love a decentralized alternative for eCommerce. Wouldn't you?

This is my entry for the @originalworks writing contest.

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