{"id":35976,"date":"2015-11-20T16:35:49","date_gmt":"2015-11-20T21:35:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/insidebitcoins.com\/?p=35976"},"modified":"2021-08-21T13:59:41","modified_gmt":"2021-08-21T17:59:41","slug":"brock-pierce-its-easy-to-sell-companies-on-bitcoin-when-it-saves-them-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/insidebitcoins.com\/news\/brock-pierce-its-easy-to-sell-companies-on-bitcoin-when-it-saves-them-money","title":{"rendered":"Brock Pierce: It\u2019s Easy to Sell Companies on Bitcoin When It Saves Them Money"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bitcoin has been touted as a revolution in money and finance for a few years now, but overall adoption by consumers and major corporations is still essentially zero. There are certain types of individuals and businesses who have already found out ways to benefit from using Bitcoin\u2019s blockchain for payments or other applications, but a killer app that brings millions of new users to the digital currency has yet to emerge.<\/p>\n

Read More: Where are Bitcoin\u2019s Killer Apps?<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Mainstream adoption of Bitcoin applications was a main topic of conversation at a <\/span>recent BitPanel Meetup<\/span><\/a>, and <\/span>Blockchain Capital<\/span><\/a> Managing Partner <\/span>Brock Pierce<\/span><\/a> was able to point out at least one Bitcoin startup that has serious potential for adoption by small and large businesses in the form of <\/span>Align Commerce<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Practical Bitcoin Startups are Attracting VC Funding<\/b><\/p>\n

A key theme during the entire BitPanel Meetup was the need for startups to find specific use cases of the Bitcoin blockchain that people will actually want to use. There are plenty of Bitcoin companies that are able to attract investors, but many of them are having difficulties with luring customers away from other options and earning revenue. <\/span>Coinsilium<\/span><\/a>\u2019s <\/span>Pierre Wolff<\/span><\/a> noted that at least two companies in the Bitcoin space, <\/span>Abra<\/span><\/a> and Align Commerce, have been able to attract big investors because they\u2019re providing something that provides value to their users:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve got three portfolio companies today and certainly two of them in the remittance space that are actually getting the big <\/span><\/i>VCs<\/span><\/i><\/a> in them. So, they\u2019ve now reached that next level where they are getting the fuel on the fire because the remittance [use case has potential]. When we talk about Bitcoin, we shouldn\u2019t talk generically about all of this; there\u2019s actually market sectors, and in remittance, we\u2019re beginning to see evidence that something is happening.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Wolff went on to explain that Abra and Align Commerce are targeting two different markets with their respective offerings:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThose two companies — one is going to the very high end, so they\u2019re not going to the third world [use case] and getting money from immigrant to family at home. They\u2019re dealing with hundreds of millions of dollars of large, corporate transactions taking place and moving money — in the case of Align [Commerce]. In the case of Abra, you\u2019ve got kind of the lower-end remittance play. Both of those are getting the right attention from the right people because they\u2019re doing the right things.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Companies Want to Save Money, With or WIthout Bitcoin<\/b><\/p>\n

It was at this point in the conversation that Brock Pierce went into more detail about Align Commerce and how it should be easy for a company like that to pitch their product to a CFO. Pierce explained that the Bitcoin-powered application will be able to save some companies large sums of cash:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn the case of Align Commerce, they\u2019re going after not remittance really. They\u2019re going after the wire transfer business; it\u2019s wires. This is bank to bank, large dollar volume where you\u2019re paying 20, 30, [or] 40 bucks for the wire plus a 2 to 3 percent FX fee that\u2019s buried in that. And when you\u2019re a company sending, you know, $50 million from here to Europe and you can save a million dollars per year, it\u2019s not a hard sell to get a CFO to play with you.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Instead of promoting themselves as a Bitcoin company, Align Commerce has chosen to keep nearly all mentions of the blockchain off of their website. After all, their customers are not interested in Bitcoin; they simply want to use something cheaper than what is currently offered by the legacy financial system.<\/span><\/p>\n

Read More: Brock Pierce: Consumers Don\u2019t Care About Bitcoin, They Care About Faster and Better<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Selling Bitcoin to Consumers is More Difficult<\/b><\/p>\n

Although it is easy to sell a product like Align Commerce to a CFO at a company, getting consumers to use Bitcoin has proven to be a bit of a challenge up to this point. Pierce hit this point during the recent BitPanel Meetup:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe hard part is convincing consumers to do this. Convincing CFOs is a much easier one because you\u2019re going to get his attention when you tell him you can save him a half a million dollars per year.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Having said that, it\u2019s possible that Abra could be the application that finally gets more of the general public on the blockchain. Much like Align Commerce, Abra does not brag about their use of the Bitcoin blockchain in their marketing material. Instead, they are usually referred to as the Uber of money transfers, which is a concept that more people will understand. As long as Abra can offer a cheaper alternative to the current options in international remittances, no one is going to care if Bitcoin is used as the plumbing underneath the whole system.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Kyle Torpey is a freelance journalist who has been following Bitcoin since 2011. His work has been featured on VICE Motherboard, Business Insider, RT\u2019s Keiser Report, and many other media outlets. You can follow <\/span><\/i>@kyletorpey<\/span><\/i><\/a> on Twitter.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bitcoin has been touted as a revolution in money and finance for a few years now, but overall adoption by consumers and major corporations is […]<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":35822,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5916,5931,734,5915,5914,5930],"class_list":["post-35976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-more-crypto-news","tag-abra","tag-align-commerce","tag-bitcoin","tag-bitpanel","tag-brock-pierce","tag-pierre-wolff"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nBrock Pierce: It\u2019s Easy to Sell Companies on Bitcoin When It Saves Them Money - InsideBitcoins.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Brock Pierce went into more detail about Align Commerce and how it should be easy for a company like that to pitch their product to a CFO.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/insidebitcoins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35976\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Brock Pierce: It\u2019s Easy to Sell Companies on Bitcoin When It Saves Them Money\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Brock Pierce went into more detail about Align Commerce and how it should be easy for a company like that to pitch their product to a CFO.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"InsideBitcoins.com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2015-11-20T21:35:49+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-08-21T17:59:41+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/insidebitcoins.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Screenshot-2015-11-16-at-10.08.25-AM.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1278\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"673\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Kyle Torpey\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Kyle Torpey\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"NewsArticle\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/insidebitcoins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35976#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/insidebitcoins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35976\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Kyle Torpey\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/insidebitcoins.com\/#\/schema\/person\/c2f79a004376d7ebb307d0f0febb24ed\"},\"headline\":\"Brock Pierce: It\u2019s Easy to Sell Companies on Bitcoin When It Saves Them Money\",\"datePublished\":\"2015-11-20T21:35:49+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2021-08-21T17:59:41+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/insidebitcoins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35976\"},\"wordCount\":877,\"commentCount\":2,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/insidebitcoins.com\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/insidebitcoins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35976#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/insidebitcoins.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Screenshot-2015-11-16-at-10.08.25-AM.png\",\"keywords\":[\"abra\",\"align commerce\",\"Bitcoin\",\"bitpanel\",\"brock pierce\",\"pierre wolff\"],\"articleSection\":[\"More Crypto News\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/insidebitcoins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35976#respond\"]}],\"copyrightYear\":\"2015\",\"copyrightHolder\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/insidebitcoins.com\/#organization\"}},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/insidebitcoins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35976\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/insidebitcoins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35976\",\"name\":\"Brock Pierce: It\u2019s Easy to Sell Companies on Bitcoin When It Saves Them Money - 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