Bitcoin just had a defining moment.

The mistakes of the old guard usually pave the way for the new guard. If the new guard is willing and prepared to take full advantage of their mistakes, then real change is only a spark away. The bitcoin community is ready!

Visa and Master card just revoked backpage.com’s access to their network. One of the biggest classified sites on the internet was left with no choice but to turn to bitcoin as their exclusive payment method. Their users are not elite crypto hackers nor even tech savvy, they are a slice of the mainstream with a unique sub culture.

A very large spark recently made headlines: Visa and Mastercard revoked backpage.com’s access to their networks. One of the biggest classified sites on the internet was left with no choice but to turn to bitcoin as its exclusive payment method. But backpage.com wasn’t acting on impulse; it knew that bitcoin users are not elite crypto-hackers or even tech savvy engineers, but a slice of the mainstream with a unique subculture.

Revolutions go mainstream when more and more inroads are paved to it via cohesive communities. When a subculture latches onto an idea and “gets it” then a new road is paved for mainstream adoption. Bitcoin just became an essential part of life for a decent segment of working class people. Companions, message
therapists, escorts, call them whatever you will, they work for a living and are average non technical folks. There are many of them and they are determined to figure this out.  The question now is, will the bitcoin community adapt fast enough to give them what they need?

Tipping point

Tipping Point

Our phone hasn’t stopped ringing for three days. Calls only stop for a short while between 4-7 AM. Our online chat has overwhelmed our intern and she had take a two day “sleep vacation”. Our traders have been scrambling to fulfill orders around the world. We’ve guided over 1000 people to getting their first bitcoin. Some got the concept of buying from other people directly quite naturally, for others they had to be walked through the entire process on the phone. Flustered and frustrated they finally got it. The best part is the feedback we’ve gotten.

Our developers have synthesized the tremendous feedback we got from the confused and perplexed first timers and are now redesigning our peer- to-peer marketplace completely to streamline it for new buyers. The more we onboard this process, the easier it will be for this new road to be paved to mainstream adoption. When the next spark goes up from the next big mistake the banks and payment networks make, we will be in an ever better position to maximize bitcoin’s footprint.

Our Strengths

We’ve got a few things on our side as a community.

  1. 1Pure evangelistic fervor: driven by a passion for people power, the bitcoin community has gathered some of the brightest minds, and deepest pockets. Venture capitalists stand shoulder to shoulder with crypto geeks and working men who see bitcoin’s potential to empower the people.
  2. The world’s most powerful super computing network. The bitcoin network is 500 times more powerful than the world’s next most powerful computing system. That is real power and real work backing bitcoin.
  3. An amazing network of traders who are ready willing and able to help people get their first bitcoins fast and hassle free.
  4. A growing eco system of startups and open source developers releasing more and better tools to make bitcoin easier to use, be it maps, wallets, api servers or marketplaces.
    That’s a huge edge and it’s going to be put to the test soon as more and more working people flood to bitcoin. We are ready and now is the time.

Opportunity

We have a real opportunity here to show the world just how useful bitcoin is. The biggest pain point of bitcoin has not been wallets or using bitcoin, but buying bitcoin, especially the first few bits. As awesome as Coinbase, Circle and all conventional brokerages and exchanges are they cannot satisfy the demand of the working people. They want their bitcoins fast and hassle free and only other people can do that.

Balanced Earth Marble

Peer-to-peer marketplaces eliminate these weaknesses. We are building a systems that will make it as simple as possible for people to join the bitcoin economy, much as Ebay showed people true value in the internet twenty years ago. Peer-to-peer marketplaces will be the way bitcoin takes the mainstream. The On Demand economy isn’t just for taxi rides and hotels anymore; with bitcoin and peer to peer marketplaces, the sharing economy is ready to invade the world of money.

We just need you.

Action

We at Paxful are calling all community traders and bitcoin supporters. Sell bitcoin on Paxful and help a newbie get their first bitcoin. You can use your bank account, PayPal accounts, Gift cards or any other way to get payment. If we can meet the tremendous demand here, we will have opened a window to a far brighter world. We can do this together and we’ve been doing it for five years. Now it’s time to bring it up to the light.

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