I was musing the other day on what do we have insofar as a 'local economy' on Steem, and there are small pockets of it, so we're at the start of something.

The biggest hurdle I see for the Natural Medicine Tribe is having the technical expertise to put together the sales portals for the various products/services we want to eventually see available in exchange for LOTUS.

It's one of the things I'm investigating and researching right now. We have 'online stores' that are accepting STEEM/SBD.... what is involved in opening those up to accepting different SCOT tokens, for example?

I like the idea of the portal you're describing, because it handles the payment as well as the 'burn' and makes it easy for the purchaser (and presumably for the purchasee).

I'd love to see (somehow) direct fiat gateways to the tokens too.....but not sure how feasible that is, and how much of a can of worms that would open.