The age of borderless commerce begins as OpenBazaar launches
The wait for the bitcoin tailored marketplace, OpenBazaar is finally over. The highly anticipated, decentralized marketplace launched in it's final, full version today, with real stores across the globe accepting real bitcoins for goods, data, and services.
The wait for the bitcoin tailored marketplace, OpenBazaar is finally over. The highly anticipated, decentralized marketplace launched in it’s final, full version today, with real stores across the globe accepting real bitcoins for goods, data, and services.
The launch appears to have gone smoothly, with no apparent technical problems. Within a few hours of opening over 6,000 people had downloaded the client software, and 2,100 of them had set up profiles within the peer-to-peer system.
“The reaction has been insane. All we did was release a blog post and a single tweet.” Sam Patterson, Operations Lead for OB1 told Brave New Coin. “People really want this, which is so wonderful to see. We’re very happy with the community’s strong response so far and hope to see many more in the days and weeks to come.”
Patterson’s enthusiasm was present in the rest of the community we spoke to on the day of the launch, including OB1 developers and several beta testers. Despite over two years of development, the community is still excited about the core mission of OpenBazaar, and it’s unique role on the web as the first truly free and global marketplace that can’t be shut down.
“OpenBazaar is a peer-to-peer social market. It’s like combining eBay™, Twitter™ and BitTorrent into one. Only, there are no fees or restrictions and OpenBazaar is open-source.”
— – OpenBazaar
Being completely open source and peer-to-peer makes OpenBazaar differ from existing marketplaces in several important ways. First of all, the code is publicly available, can be reviewed, and anyone can join the project to contribute, or simply suggest a few changes.
Such openness helps make OpenBazaar grow better with age, and allows it to change to fit the times, unlike corporate-run marketplaces that can get locked into regulations and board meeting agendas.
More importantly, OpenBazaar can’t be killed. Just as Bitcoin and Bittorrent exist only as software on user’s computers, there are no central OpenBazaar servers to target. From this day forward, the network will exist somewhere in the world, and anyone with an internet connection will be able to open up their own global storefront using it.
“OpenBazaar is a quantum leap forward that empowers free trade using Bitcoin, and this is only the beginning. If you have access to the internet, you can start offering goods and services to a global marketplace for free and without having to ask anyone’s permission!”
— – Washington Sanchez, OB1 Co-founder
The program is ready to help users list most any kind of product or service online now, but few services other than dispute moderation are offered by the platform at present. A wide variety of physical and digital goods are listed in the marketplace already, many of which were carried over from the beta testing version of OpenBazaar, that ran from the end of February until yesterday. Products from foods to jewelry to electronics can be found simply by typing keywords into the navigation bar at the top of the application.
True to the spirit of the web, adult toys and pornography are already for sale on OpenBazaar too, but stumbling across them in a search would be difficult. The platform includes a NSFW filter, and search terms would have to be very specific. Thankfully, listings like these are the exception, not the rule, with most items you see being family friendly, such as tee shirts, collectibles, and cellphone accessories.
“OpenBazaar is a network for trading goods and services directly between people – using Bitcoin – without any central organization controlling the platform. This means you are responsible for your own activity on the network.”
- OpenBazaar
OpenBazaars peer-to-peer architecture, with no central servers to upgrade and no scaling costs, allows the platform to grow quickly and effectively. Since the marketplace is extremely easy to join, and has no fees, there is isn’t much to stop it from growing. Often referred to as an eBay or Amazon ‘killer,’ in reality, most e-commerce websites could fall prey to OpenBazaar if it gains sufficient popularity.
Formed in September 1995, eBay Inc. claims 160 million buyers have used the service. In 2015, eBay Inc.’s total Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) totaled US$81.7 billion and revenue was $8.6 billion, according to the company’s 2015 annual report.
“While eBay was once an auction site selling vintage items, today 80% of the items sold on eBay are new, and at any given time we have over 800 million live listings.”
— – Ebay
Amazon Inc. is perhaps closer to OpenBazaar in form and function. The Seattle-based electronic commerce and cloud computing company is the largest English-native marketplace online, having opened in July 1995. Last year the company reported a record net sales of $107.0 billion.
“Twenty years ago, I was driving the packages to the post office myself and hoping we might one day afford a forklift. This year, we pass $100 billion in annual sales and serve 300 million customers.”
— – Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO
A particularly fertile ground may be the market served by Etsy, where online boutique stores are structured very similar to OpenBazaar stores. In the third quarter ending September 2015, Etsy Inc. reported more than 1.5 million active sellers and 22.6 million active buyers.
While the comparison are easy to make, we live in a time when the masses have access to $5 smartphones, and a Billion new internet users are rapidly coming online from the developing world.
Amazon and eBay both restrict access, yet OpenBazaar is available on every computer with an internet connection. eBay is only usable in just over 30 countries while Amazon reports that it has hosted merchants from “more than 100 different countries,” although it allows them to sell to customers in a total of 185 in total.
Selling goods and services across borders that have always been impossible to penetrate before is a powerful feature. There are many reasons we don’t have access to goods and services we want today, and this program is specially equipped to bring them to us.
Although using bitcoin for the first time is going to be a strong deterrent to the many millions of members at these three marketplaces, OpenBazaar’s complete lack of fees and new markets may provide enough incentive to switch, or at least try OpenBazaar on the side.
“I am so proud to say that while so many people question the real value of Bitcoin to the average person,” Brian Hoffman, OB1 Project Lead explained, “OpenBazaar aims to prove them wrong by making it something anyone anywhere can use without being burdened by borders and restrictions. That’s the true value of Bitcoin to us.”
There are many reasons we can’t have what we want when we want it, and until now, too many of those reasons have not been a simple lack of demand in a free marketplace.
Sometimes we aren’t allowed to buy what we want from other countries because of a tax law or high tariffs. Sometimes it’s just not profitable enough to ship bulk amounts of it to your region from a distant manufacturing plant.
Quite a lot of the time, however, products can’t be sold across national boundaries. Monopolies held by competitors in the other countries that won’t allow them to enter the local market is all too common. The history between rival chocolate manufacturers Hershey’s and Mars is filled with examples of these battles, which is why the Mars bar hasn’t been sold in the US since 2002.
Another example is the popular Xiaomi brand of smartphones in China. The Xiaomi Mi 5 and Redmi Note 3 sell more units in China than the Apple iPhone line sells elsewhere, and at a fraction of the price, only $160 for a full-featured model that much of the rest of the world might appreciate very much. Unfortunately, Xiaomi, though well known across Asia for their great design and value, are simply not available in the west, and that goes for several other whole brands sold in China as well.
Goods and services sold from anywhere without restrictions will blur the lines and could eventually erode borders. Never again will consumers be limited to the products and services allowed to be sold in their own countries.
“Free and open markets is the natural destination of the Bitcoin revolution, and we’re excited that OpenBazaar is going to disrupt the future of global commerce. At the heart of what we’re doing is a passion to enable individuals to start businesses, succeed, and obtain a little more financial independence and prosperity.”
— – Washington Sanchez, Co-founder, OB1
Getting into OpenBazaar for the first time is easy. The program is available on Windows, Mac, and Linux clients already, and the 51MB linux or 83MB windows installer file starts automatically when you arrive on the download page. After running the program to install it, and logging in for the first time, you’ll want to go to the Settings menu and set options like your name, bitcoin address, stylize your page, turn on notification emails, NSFW settings, perhaps write a word or two for people that may stop by your profile, and of course add a profile pic.
You can also set yourself up as a Moderator inside the system to earn a little extra coin settling disputes, just by turning the option on and setting a fee rate. From there you can either set up a store of your own, or simply start browsing other users’ listings.
There’s no way to access actual listings on the internet, but there are third-party websites that will aggregate them, like OpenBazaar search engine BazaarBay, who is already doing the work of taking listings from OpenBazaar, so everyone can search OpenBazaar products.
Due to the peer-to-peer nature of OpenBazaar, at least for now, a store owners’ computer needs to be turned on, and the software client running. However, for those that don’t want to let their stores go down, there is already a solution to host your store online, too. This guide to setting up your OpenBazaar store on a VPS can walk you through installing an OpenBazaar server on DigitalOcean, one of the most popular and fairly priced web hosts in the development community.
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