Do you want to know what sucks? The fact that places like Amazon, Etsy, and eBay don't accept any cryptocurrencies. Now, I recently got my own website to accept crypto, but, let's face it, people are far more likely to trust a place like eBay and Amazon.

As of right now, there are three marketplaces I can think of where average people can sell their thrift or other wares for crypto: OpenBazaar/Haven, Bitify, and Particl. That's the extent of it, as far as I'm aware. Every now and again, a rumor will bubble up about how Amazon will be accepting crypto (looking back at you, 2019), but it never seems to go anywhere.

As it stands, it's difficult to earn cryptocurrency, which is why it's such a shame. Mining is expensive, faucets don't give much out, and it can be hard to invest when you're broke or come from a poor country. Cryptocurrency has the ability to change the lives of people all over the world for the better, but it has to be seen as a real, viable alternative to currency rather than something for the rich to invest in.

Here's the problem with the market as it is:

OpenBazaar: This project is very nearly dead as of 2021. The idea of it was that you downloaded their desktop app and created your own store. You could list whatever you wanted, and people could pay with BTC, BCH, or ZEC. That's not a lot of options, but this was the first of its kind.

There was also an app that goes with it called Haven. I still have this app on my phone, the idea being that it functions similar to OpenBazaar. You create your store and start listing things for sale. Both Haven and OpenBazaar have built-in escrow, so buyers aren't going to be scammed by unscrupulous sellers.

The downside was that people could only find your store if you had the app open. I'm not sure if this applies to Haven (if it does, maybe that's why I never saw sales), but OpenBazaar was notorious for being difficult to get found on.

The other downside is that very few people used them and very few people made any money. I, personally, never had anything sell. I had one follower, which was pretty cool, but we never bought anything from each other.

It's such a shame, as this type of thing could have held real potential. I blame part of its failure on being so hard to use and another part on the fact that people too often see cryptocurrencies as an investment, not a currency. The idea is to invest and grow their fiat wallet, not to use it as an alternative to fiat.

Particl: Particl is a new coin that is trying to gain legitimacy through the new Particl Market, which looks like it could be a new take on the OpenBazaar experiment. I have the desktop application installed, but I haven't done much with it yet. It's a bit difficult to figure out, and it's not ready for a mass launch yet.

I think OpenBazaar was a good idea, and I with Particl all the luck in the world. My problem with it right now is two-fold: a.) you can only pay using the Particl coin and b.) I can only imagine enthusiasts bothering to install software on their computers in order to sell their stuff for crypto.

Bitify: Bitify should have a lot going for it. It's hosted on the web, so you don't have to download anything special to use it. You can post all kinds of things for sale, it uses escrow, and seems to have a decent amount of users. It's still difficult to sell anything, though. They just don't accept many forms of payment, and so many people want to hold onto their BTC or use it for particularly large purchases.

It also doesn't help that it's littered with suspiciously cheap gift cards, cheap lifetime subscriptions to various services, etc. I don't know how many people shop there for things that aren't ridiculously cheap (possibly stolen) gift cards and the like.

Even still, I'll still be posting a lot of stuff from my own website onto there just to see if any of it sells or if people are just interested in $10 lifetime subscriptions to Adobe.

A Way Forward

I don't know for certain of the way forward, but I think Bitify is on the right track. Ideally, some of the bigger players in this space will start accepted crypto, and multiple forms of crypto at that, but I'm not sure what the likelihood is right now. There needs to be a radical shift in how the public sees cryptocurrencies. Right now, I think too many people, including the big wigs of eCommerce, see crypto as something only for people who like to dabble in the stock market.

There's one group trying to create a marketplace on ZeroNet, which is an interesting idea. My very quick research, however, makes me wonder if ZeroNet has the back-end capabilities to support a store. There's also the downside in that ZeroNet doesn't have a lot of users yet, and Windows users tend to report problems with it on its official subreddit.

What do you guys think? Is there a way to break into the mainstream?